The Final Pack
by Sparkle Itamashii
Summary: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him. Sterek.
1. Chapter One

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

_I'm writing because we should not be forgotten. Because we should be more than a footnote in the history of humankind. We should be more than text on a page, more than a memory. We should be a legend. We lived and we loved and we lost _so much_. Maybe we can at least be a lesson..._

* * *

**Chapter One**

The empty, metallic room was spotlessly clean, smelling of stainless steel and filtered air, the chill of it seeping into Stiles' skin the longer he sat in the uncomfortable metal chair. It was bolted to the pock-marked floor just like the empty metal table at which he sat, neither of them capable of being used as weapons. He slouched in the seat, thumbs hooked together, his hands between his knees, counting the pock marks in each metal tile even though he knew there were 196 in each.

There were 196 divots in each tile in his room, too.

Exactly ten minutes - because it was always exactly ten minutes - after he had been left alone in the little interrogation room, the door across the table from him opened. Stiles didn't bother looking up. He knew the man that came to see him would enter, cross the room, lay a folder on the table between them. He would take a seat, like he had done every week for two years now, and he would wait for Stiles to speak. Sometimes Stiles would look back at him until their hour was up, sometimes Stiles would keep counting. It didn't matter which, not to either of them.

"Mr. Stilinski," greeted a soft, feminine voice.

Startled, Stiles looked up, the cuffs on his wrists clacking together. This wasn't Harris. This was someone new, someone Stiles had never seen before in his life. She was thin, dark skinned, with very straight, dark hair and she was deceptively beautiful, innocent. But Stiles knew better, looking into her doe-brown eyes. She may not have been Harris, but she still wanted something from him, was still scheming about how to get it.

"My name is Miranda. Miranda Morell."

He dropped his gaze.

"Where's Harris?" Stiles asked, voice rough from disuse.

"Out," she answered ambiguously.

"So they sent a newbie? They shouldn't have sent you," he told her. "You couldn't take me if I got out of my cuffs."

She studied him for a moment, the familiar brown folder held close to her breast, like a shield. "I suppose we won't find out. You're not out of your cuffs."

Looking back up at her, he smiled the sort of smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, hollow and dangerous. "Are you sure about that? Willing to stake your life on it?"

Her eyes traced over him, over the way he sat, over the way he looked at her, and then she moved into the room, laid her folder on the table between them. There was something else in the pile that Stiles didn't recognize, something wrapped in a wrinkled, brown-paper bag. A little, black recording device sat nestled on top of the stack.

Then she took her seat, crossed her legs, and met his eyes. "Shall we find out?"

For a moment he considered his options. Gerard wouldn't have sent someone in with him if they didn't know their shit. He wouldn't have put anyone unwitting into that sort of danger, if only because it would make him look bad. So whoever this was, however nervous she looked, she could probably take care of herself. Maybe she could take care of Stiles, if Stiles found a reason to resist. Instead, he pulled his wrists up from beneath the table, laid them out before her, cuffs intact. She just smiled politely.

"I'm not here to fight you," she told him quietly. "I'm here to learn from you. It's been over two years since you spoke to anyone about what happened."

"Gonna be at least two more," Stiles told her coldly.

She pursed her lips. "You have to talk to someone."

"I don't have to talk to anyone," Stiles replied evenly. "Not ever."

Sighing, she leaned forward, as if consulting him, as if advising him. He knew she was just prying. "You've been in solitary for two years, Stiles. Aren't you tired of it?"

He leaned forward as well, forearms sliding on the cool metal of the table until he reached the end of his chain, bolted to the floor, hooked to his cuffs. He looked her right in the eyes. "Ma'am... when I'm tired of solitary, you won't have to ask."

A sense of satisfaction curled in Stiles' gut when she took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. He could almost hear the way she tried to organize her thoughts, find another angle by which to approach him, but the problem was that Stiles had been through two years of angles. Harris had covered every angle, asked every question, made every threat. He'd offered anything, everything he thought Stiles might want. Not once had he ever found a crack, an opening to get under Stiles' skin.

There was nothing left that Stiles wanted. Nothing they were capable of giving him, anyway.

Yet, she'd been in the room with him for less than ten minutes before she folded her hands in her lap, leaned back in her chair, and pressed exactly where it hurt most.

"They tell me you fought alongside werewolves, Stiles. Can you tell me at least that much? Is it true?"

Of course she didn't need him to answer. She'd seen the way he started at the word 'werewolves,' a light coming to his eyes. But he looked away from her, pulled his hands off the table. "Yeah," he admitted quietly, voice cracking. "It's true. I used to, once."

Her expression softened sadly. "I'd like to know what happened."

The haunted look in his eyes when he glanced up to her was enough to break hearts. He just shook his head, jaw tight. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Ever?" she asked.

"Maybe. Not right now," he told her. "Not with you."

She tipped her head, just the tiniest amount, and Stiles' heart gave a little twist. The gesture had been familiar once. "Why not me?"

Lips pursed, a disgusted noise rough at the back of his throat, Stiles solidly met her gaze. "Because you _can't_ understand." He shook his head, because it was impossible for her to think she possibly could. Not hiding behind walls like these. "You've never loved them. And now they're gone."

That seemed to quell her momentarily, her dark eyes tracing over him, letting his words sink in fully. She knew some of the story, knew what they had thought she needed to know before she went into the room. They had told her how _dangerous_ this guy was, but no one had mentioned how _broken._ "I'd like to," she told him quietly.

He gave her a funny look, shaking his head just enough to give the impression he thought she was being completely ridiculous. "Why do you even care, lady?"

"Someone has to, don't you think?" she returned solemnly.

Stiles snorted derisively. "No one ever did before."

The remark didn't seem to phase her at all. "You did," she said evenly.

For a moment he just stared at her, mouth slightly open, and then he scoffed, looked away again. "Yeah, and look where that got me."

Sitting up, she reached for the recorder on the table, moved it off the small stack, separated the object in the brown-paper bag, and laid open the folder. Stiles looked away, because he knew what was in the folder. Transcripts, pictures, documents. His past. She pulled out one, moved it in front of him, tapped it once with her middle finger. When he spared it a glance, his brow furrowed because it was one he didn't recognize.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked softly. Before he could answer she continued. "It's a release form. There have been some... _changes_ recently. Some new information has come to light, and if I can debrief you, I can have you released."

Stiles' gaze fell to the document again, tracing over the typewriter print, the handwritten information in the blank spaces. He shook his head, leaned back away from the table again. "Doesn't matter," he told her. "Out there, in here... it doesn't matter."

Slowly she nodded, and then reached for the brown-paper bag. As she unwrapped it, she told him: "I thought you might say that, so I brought a piece of the information that was uncovered. I have reason to believe you will find it invaluable."

She laid upon the table a small, leather-bound journal, tied shut but not locked, the pages slightly wrinkled from damp storage. It clung to the steel beneath it as she slid it across the table to rest in front of him. Hesitantly, his heart in his belly, he reached up and brushed his fingers over the blood-stained surface. Tears jumped to his eyes, memories washing through him as if someone had opened a floodgate.

He recognized this journal.

"Where-" his voice cracked, broken, and he cleared his throat, looking up to her. "Where did you get this?"

"It was recovered when you were captured," she told him. "Lost in storage. You can open it, if you'd like."

Swallowing thickly, Stiles unlooped the leather holding the journal shut, pulled the cover away from the sheets of paper within. Rough words lay scratched onto the pages in a handwriting that was so, so familiar, even after over two years of its absence from his life. He closed his eyes, because he knew the first words on the page by heart, felt them like a vice on his heart.

_I'm writing because we should not be forgotten._

This was Derek's journal.

"You've read it?" he asked quietly.

"Every word," she replied.

He met her eyes. "Then you know what happened."

With an open-handed gesture, she indicated the recorder still sitting upon the table. "I need to hear it from you, Stiles. Everything that happened, in as much detail as you can give. I'm sorry I have to ask this of you, I am, but they need to hear your story. All of it."

"They?" Stiles repeated.

She smiled apologetically. "I can't tell you who. I have to ask that you trust me for now."

He dropped his gaze to the journal once more, eyes tracking over the script, mind tracing over the memories. He could feel himself strung tight enough to snap and so he took a deep breath, forced himself to relax. It had been so long, and they were not in danger anymore. No one could take them from him if he shared with the soft-spoken woman before him now and just maybe she could bring their story to others.

Derek would have wanted that. To have his pack remembered.

They deserved that much, Stiles thought.

"Okay," he whispered, more a surrender than an agreement.

With a small nod, she reached out and clicked the record button.

* * *

From the corner of his eyes, Stiles could see the others in the squad spread out in the dense foliage around him. Scott was ahead of the group by at least 20 feet, ranging ahead because he had the softest step of any of them, even on the frost-bitten, crackly leaves of the forest. To his right he could just make out the shadow that was Danny and to his left somewhere was Jackson, only visible when he moved. It was a good team to have on a foggy January morning, even if it was missing two of its members.

He raised one hand, pressed a finger to the com button near his ear. "Scott, don't get too far ahead, buddy."

"Oh, that's rich coming from you," Scott replied and Stiles could almost hear the eye roll that accompanied it. "What are you gonna do if I don't listen?"

Stiles scoffed, then tapped the com again. "I'll make sure you don't get a red meat ration for a week when we get back."

"You can't!" Scott squawked, though he probably meant to sound confident. Red meat rations were something very precious to them, since the livestock that needed to be raised to provide it had been scarce to find around their base. The population was only just climbing, with all the mouths to feed.

"Want to bet?" Stiles asked. "If I can keep it away from my dad, I can keep it away from you!"

The crackle across the com probably contained a few choice words for what Stiles could do with that plan before it cleared.

"You really want to be making that threat?" Danny's voice broke over the com. "McCall will take squad lead back in a few months and he'll remember this."

"A few months?" Stiles teased. "We'll be lucky if we see him out of that nursery for a year after the kid's born. Allison either. It'll be just us, boys, and Matt when he's better."

"I'm not following your dumbass lead for a year, Stilinski," rattled Jackson's voice in the com.

"Not going to have a choice, Whittemore," Scott reprimanded. "When I'm out, Stiles is in charge, you know that. You signed up for that."

"I didn't- Hey," Jackson said, cutting himself off before he could pick a fight. "Guys, I think I found something. Footprints. Heading off two-o'clock from where I am."

"On our way," Stiles told him, changing course to about where he figured Jackson should be. It was hard to see in the fog, but when Danny caught up to him he motioned just a little to their right where Jackson was crouched. Scott was clambering through the dead underbrush to reach them.

Jackson motioned to the indentations in the soft mud below them. Stiles traced the outline of the print with his eyes, the rainwater gathering in the long arch, the five dimples at the lead edge that indicated claws. The two prints were not footprints; they were _pawprints_ and he knew exactly what had laid them there.

"Werewolves," he said, not bothering with the com.

"Just one," Scott said. "Too big to be full wolf, and the betas leave human footprints when shifted. Looks like we're tailing that alpha Greg spotted last month."

"Oh good," Stiles said cheerfully. "Just what I wanted- to be tailing a bloodthirsty alpha werewolf in six inches of mud in the rain and fog. Excellent."

Jackson rolled his eyes and Scott slapped him in the chest. "Come on," Scott told him. "This is serious."

"Dude, you really want to try to take on an _alpha_ with just the four of us?" Stiles asked. "What about the rest of the pack? They could be anywhere in this shit and we wouldn't see them until it's too late. You know there's at least three of them."

"So that's your call?" Scott asked him in return. "Just going to let it go? What if it comes calling at camp? What if it catches your dad's scouting party?"

Stiles clenched his jaw but managed not to roll his eyes. "Okay, yeah. We can't let it just... go. Whatever, okay, we'll go chase it down."

Nodding, Scott turned away in the direction the footsteps faced. "I'll range ahead and see if I can't pick up the next set, give us a good direction."

"Stay close," Stiles told the other two as Scott disappeared ahead of them. "Keep eyes out to either side in case it turned off course. Danny, hang back and radio Lydia. Let her know we found something."

Danny nodded, dropping back and pulling a small radio from his belt. Jackson watched him for a second and then stepped sideways, fanning left away from Stiles. Ahead of them Scott was already out of sight and so Stiles moved to his right and kept his eyes to the soft, wet ground. Scott checked in to say the wolf was on course just as Danny passed Stiles on the left, following the center path Scott had taken.

"Hey guys." Danny's voice crackled over the com. "I found blood."

"Scott, did you see it too?" Stiles asked.

Dead air greeted the team.

Stiles' brow furrowed and he pressed his finger back to the com. "Scott. Did you hear Danny? Did you find blood?"

An unearthly snarl rent the air and Stiles was running before he even had time to think about what they were running toward. Danny was behind him an instant later, leaping over a rotting tree with his gun already in hand. Scott's pained scream drowned out Jackson crashing through the forest to their left. Three gunshots rattled through the trees and Stiles was thankful because it meant Scott was still alive, still fighting.

"Scott!" Stiles shouted. He could hear the sounds of the fight now, the snarls, Scott's cursing, the dull sound of impact after impact, of tearing fabric.

Stiles burst into the clearing first, just in time to see the alpha werewolf peel away from Scott, dropping back. Its shoulder was seeping blood from a gunshot wound and it was glaring at Stiles with all its long, sharp teeth bared. Scott was prone on the ground, groaning and clutching at his side, Danny crouched beside him. But Scott was alive and that had to count for something.

Before anyone could make a move, the clearing was suddenly full of werewolves, bursting in from across the clearing. Two of them, a dark haired girl and a young boy, grabbed hold of the alpha, one arm each, and started dragging him out of view. Stiles shifted his gun to the younger wolves but his shot was interrupted by a bulkier, dark haired werewolf who was shouting something at him. Stiles couldn't focus over the sound of his heart thrumming in his ears but he could hear there was more shouting.

"Hold your fire!" Stiles shouted as Jackson burst into the clearing. Danny was still crouched beside Scott, examining him, but Stiles could tell what had happened by the look on his face. Scott had been bitten.

"Hold my- are you insane?" Jackson snapped, bringing his rifle up.

"We don't kill humans!" the beta was shouting at him. Stiles trained his rifle on him and the guy held up one hand as if to stall him. "_We don't kill humans_!"

A shot rang out through the clearing and Stiles whipped around to face Jackson, knocking his gun's barrel aside. "Jackson! Hold your damn fire!"

"Why?" Jackson yelled back, bringing his rifle to aim again, Danny beside him now. "They hurt Scott!"

Stiles batted at his rifle again, but Jackson dipped it away from him. "I swear to god, if you fire one more shot I will personally ensure you never see the field again!" He snarled before turning to face the werewolves again, meeting the dark haired beta's pale eyes.

"Derek!" the young blonde girl at the beta's side was pleading, held back by his outstretched arm. "We can't let them get back to the others!"

"No!" the beta, Derek, shouted back, eyes still locked on Stiles. "No, we don't kill humans, we don't! We just want to get my uncle away from here."

"Stiles," Danny said from beside him, sounding much more collected than anyone else. "We can't let them leave."

"Scott's been bitten?" Stiles demanded, needing to be sure. He had to repeat it to get a snapped 'yes' from Danny. "Then stand down," he ordered.

"But-"

"Get out of here," Stiles told the beta in front of him. "Do _not_ make me say it twice."

"All right, okay," Derek agreed, both hands up in a placating gesture before he grabbed onto the sleeve of the burly beta snarling at his other side. The blonde was already standing down, backing away from the humans. "We're sorry. Thank you, we won't-"

"Just get out of here!" Stiles snapped, taking a step forward.

The wolves scattered as quickly as they were able while carting their injured leader. Jackson cursed in more colorful language than Stiles had heard in a long time as he covered their retreat with Danny. Dropping down beside his injured friend, Stiles peeled Scott's hand away from his hip. There was a lot of blood, enough to coat both his hands. The twin crescent bite wounds were jagged and oozing.

"Why the fuck did you let them leave?" Jackson cussed as soon as the wolves were out of sight. "We had the whole pack there!"

"And how do you think that would have ended, Jackson?" Stiles asked harshly. "Six of them against three of us?"

"We could have at least taken their damn alpha!" Jackson snarled.

"Yeah?" Stiles snapped. "How about you use your freaking head for a minute and think about why that would be a bad move."

"We need him alive for Scott," Danny intoned levelly. Both Jackson and Stiles turned to look at him; even Scott looked up. Danny shrugged. "There's that rumor, you remember right? Kill the one that bit you, turn back human. If you'd killed that alpha, Scott'd be done for. No chance at becoming human again."

Jackson let out a breath, frustrated because Danny was right and he hadn't even thought of that. He would have let their squad leader get turned permanently if Stiles hadn't been thinking.

"Exactly," Stiles confirmed, turning back to Scott. "Now, we don't know that it'll work but... it's all we have."

"We can't take him back to base," Danny pointed out before looking skyward. "And it's going to start raining again soon."

"You radioed Lydia, right?" Stiles demanded of Danny, who nodded. "Okay, then. Look, they know we were hunting the alpha. You two go back, tell them you got separated from us and you came back like you're supposed to."

"Coms?" Jackson reminded him, tapping the side of his helmet. Without any warning, Danny smashed the butt of his rifle into the side of Jackson's head where the button to his com was. Jackson dropped to the ground with a shout of pain, clutching at the side of his head. "What the hell, Danny?!"

Danny shrugged as he peeled off his own helmet and tossed it to the ground beside Stiles and Scott. "We ran into the alpha. Your com got damaged. I lost my helmet."

"How about next time I lose the helmet and you get the concussion?" Jackson growled, prying at the edges of his helmet until it came off. His ear was bleeding, but not badly. "Some best friend you are."

"I hurt you because I care." Danny smiled smoothly. "Has to look real so you don't get in trouble."

"Get a room," Stiles told them both as he helped Scott to his feet, draping one of his best friend's arms over his shoulder.

Danny and Jackson both backed up to give them space. "Where are you taking him?" Danny asked, actually concerned.

"I don't know," Stiles said. He twitched his shoulder and Scott let go of him, testing his ability to stand on his own. Though his leg was sore where the alpha had lashed out at him, it was only bruised, not broken. "How far do you think you can walk?"

"Ugh, walking... man, I think it broke my ribs. It was trying to get my gun," Scott informed them with a groan.

"Smart dog," Stiles told him with a smile. "I'd try to get your gun too. You're lethal with that thing."

Scott laughed but the noise deteriorated into a whimper of pain. "Dude, don't make me laugh."

"You'll heal." Stiles regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth. Of course Scott would heal but it would be a matter of hours rather than weeks when the bite began to work.

"That's sort of the problem, isn't it?" Scott asked, trying to make light of it. Then he sighed heavily, shook his head. "I can't go back to camp. They'll kill me just for being bit."

Eyes closed, Stiles ran one hand over his face, up over his buzzed hair as he let out a deep breath. "Look, I don't have answers, you don't have answers. There's really only one place that has answers. One group of people."

"One pack," Danny surmised.

"Yeah," Stiles confirmed. Scott was shaking his head before Stiles even opened his mouth.

"No, Stiles," he said. "No way. We're not going to the _werewolves_. Are you crazy?"

Jackson snorted. "Somehow I think the Hills pack isn't into adopting stray puppies," he pointed out sardonically.

"He has a point," Danny conceded. "They might just kill you."

A huff of laughter escaped Stiles. "I'll take 'might' over 'absolutely will' any day. Because that's what's waiting at base for him."

Both Jackson and Danny heaved sighs because when Stiles got that tone there was really no convincing him of anything. "What do we tell Allison?" Danny asked, resigned. "You know she's going to _flip_ that we left you out here. She'll whip her dad into taking his squad out looking if your dad doesn't get to it first."

"Just-" Stiles cut himself off and took a deep breath. "Just tell her whatever you have to, to keep her at the camp. Tell my dad I said that I lost my keys. He'll know what that means, he'll find a way to keep Chris at camp too. Just buy us _time_ okay?"

"Yeah, okay," Jackson agreed, then smacked Danny's arm with the back of his hand. "Come on, let's go before this drizzle bullshit turns into a downpour. We'll see you two lunatics back home."

Scott and Stiles watched the two of them disappear into the forest. When they were gone, Scott turned to face Stiles, gave him a concerned look. "Do you really think the werewolves will help me?"

"Honestly, I don't know," Stiles admitted, looking over. "But I know we have to try. I'm not letting you get away that easy. You're my best friend!"

"I'm your only friend," Scott told him with an eyeroll.

Stiles laughed. "Yeah, whatever. Come on, let's go throw you to the wolves."

* * *

Morell reached forward, clicking the stop button on the recorder, her dark eyes trained on Stiles. He gave her a questioning look, surprised to be interrupted. Their hour wasn't quite over yet. So far he hadn't lied, either, because this was all stuff they had probably learned. If nothing else, Allison would have told them this part.

"You took your injured best friend to a den of werewolves rather than bring him back to base to be treated?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah, well, being 'treated' here would have meant a bullet to the skull," Stiles told her plainly.

"You could have both been killed," she countered.

"Lady, he was my best friend. My only real friend, okay?" Stiles shook his head like he couldn't even believe they were having this conversation. "That's just what you do. You take the chance. You try to save him." He looked down. "Even if all you do is go down with him, you have to try."

The recorder whirred back to life.

* * *

The house was not as inconspicuous as Stiles would have thought it should be, though it was farther out than he would have expected. It was an older manor, half of it caved in from the huge oak that had fallen into it during one of the storms the apocalypse had thrown their way. But the tracks very clearly lead to this house in particular. If they hadn't been half-dragging the wounded alpha, Stiles might never have happened upon it; certainly not in one of their routine safety sweeps. Squads only ranged up to 5 miles out in a day and very rarely stayed out overnight. The real nasty supernaturals hunted at night.

Scott was flagging by the time they reached the place. He was having trouble breathing and Stiles could hear a wet noise in his lungs when he breathed in. The alpha had done more than just break a rib, of that much he was sure. He just hoped that Scott would turn fast enough to keep from dying of a punctured lung or something.

As they approached the house, Stiles could hear shouting from within. A male and a female, punctuating their argument with beastly snarls. Stiles and Scott shared a look, neither of them really wanting to interrupt a werewolf brawl. Especially not after their earlier encounter.

"Maybe we should come back," Scott suggested in jest. Stiles just rolled his eyes.

The sharp knock Stiles gave the door when they reached it silenced everything inside the house. There was a small amount of shuffling and he caught the vague whisper of someone inside, shushed by an angry, hissed reprimand. He knocked again, three times, like police officers used to do when they dragged him home to his father, the sheriff. It sounded so much less official when he knew what was on the other side of the door.

"We aren't going to hurt you," Stiles called out loudly. Scott shot him a sharp look, because they absolutely would hurt them if there was a chance they would survive it. "Come on, we need _help_. Please!"

The handle turned and the door cracked open to reveal the dark beta Stiles had ordered off earlier. Derek, Stiles recalled. That's what the blonde had called him. He was glaring at Stiles, at the way Scott leaned against Stiles like he was going to pass out. Murmurs leaked out from behind the door and Stiles assumed the rest of the pack was laying in wait.

"Your alpha bit my friend," Stiles told him by way of explanation. "I can't- we can't go back to base. They'll kill him."

"Not my problem," Derek replied harshly. "Maybe if you hadn't been out trying to hunt us down like animals-"

"Look, I'm sorry," Stiles interrupted. "But your alpha made this mess, so it's kind of your problem. You can't just say no."

"I think I did just say no," Derek pointed out.

Stiles made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. "Okay, I get it. Maybe you don't take charity cases. Fine. Name your price."

"No," Derek refused.

"Anything!" Stiles remarked hotly. "I can get you anything from our base. You want food? Medical supplies? Weapons? Whatever you want, I can bring it back for you, just... please. You gotta take him in. He's as good as dead if I bring him back. I can't do that to my best friend."

For a moment it looked as if Derek would say no again, but someone behind him was whispering something Stiles couldn't hear and Derek appeared to be listening. His eyes tracked over Stiles, taking him in, _judging_ him. Then he opened the door just a little wider to look at Scott as well. When he looked back to Stiles, it was with guarded curiosity.

"The bullets you used," he began. "They were wolfsbane laced."

"Tipped, yeah," Stiles confirmed. "It's an Argent trick. There are other kinds, stuff you could use. Silver tipped. Wooden tipped. Victoria even carved devil's traps into some of the .9mm rounds."

"I'm not interested in those," Derek told him flatly. "Do you have any of the ones you used? Right now. The wolfsbane ones."

"Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to use them if that's what-"

"Give them to me." He held out one hand, opening the door to do so. Stiles could see the others watching from behind him.

Stiles swallowed because he didn't really want to be disarmed, but he shrugged his rifle off his shoulder and unloaded it, pulled the ammo container from his belt and passed it all to Derek. The werewolf passed it all to a woman behind him, the dark haired one who had arrived to the clearing first, and she disappeared into the recesses of the house.

"Now get out of here," Derek ordered him, still glaring. "Before I rip your throat out. With my teeth."

Stiles realized what was happening just in time to stick his boot in the door to keep it from closing. He winced, because it still squeezed tight for a moment, and then Derek was back in the doorway, still glaring. Stiles did his best to remain calm. "You're taking him in," he said firmly. "He is my best friend and I am _not_ letting him die like this. I am _not_ letting him get shot like a fucking rabid dog."

"Stiles..." Scott said quietly from beside him, drawing Stiles' attention. He wasn't looking better.

"Fine," Derek agreed before Scott could say anything else. He met Stiles' eyes when he looked back. "You want my price? You."

"Me?" Stiles asked, confused.

"You want him to stay here with us?" Derek asked. "The price is that you stay too. As collateral. I'm not sending you back so you can give away our location."

"You were going to," Stiles told him. After all, Derek _had_ just ordered them out.

"We were going to fix my uncle with your bullets and skip town," Derek countered. "We can't go anywhere with a new pup in mid-turn. So either you both leave or you both stay."

"Forever?" Stiles asked, panic creeping in around the edges. He wouldn't even get to say goodbye to his father. Scott would be leaving Allison and his unborn child.

"Just until the full moon," Derek said. "If he even survives it, we can show him how to control it once he's fully turned, and then you can leave."

"That's three weeks," Stiles pointed out. "Base will come looking for us before then. His wife will come looking for him if I don't go back to stop her."

Derek shrugged. "We'll figure that out when we get there. Do we have a deal or don't we?"

Stiles looked over to Scott, who just shrugged helplessly. They were not going to get a better offer. This pack was their best shot at teaching Scott how to survive the change, how to control the werewolf side of himself. If they went back now, Scott would be killed and Stiles would be put on lockdown for not bringing him straight back, for not mercy-shooting him on the field the second he realized Scott had been bitten.

If they stayed, however, Stiles had no guarantee they wouldn't kill him in his sleep here. They could betray him, kill them both. The team would never know what really happened and the wolves would be gone before anyone found this place. There was a good chance no one would ever find their bodies.

But Stiles knew that Scott would do whatever it took to save him if their positions were reversed, and so he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders.

"Okay," Stiles agreed for both of them. "We'll stay."

Derek let out his breath and stepped aside, drawing open the door to allow them to enter. As Stiles stepped over the threshold at Scott's side, he knew there was no going back now.


	2. Chapter Two

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

**Chapter Two **

The inside of the house was not much better than the outside of the house. There were still leaves on the dusty hardwood floors, blown in through the crumbling opening of the weather-rotted damage caused by the huge fallen tree that had taken half the house with it. Some sort of ragged plastic sheet had been tacked to the ceiling between the two halves, cutting a lot of the draft from the January breeze that poured in through the damaged side of the house. Without electricity the house was still cold and damp. Stiles was glad for the comfort of Scott, warm at his shoulder, even if his friend looked like he might pass out at any moment.

Both boys threw glances around at the werewolves gathered in the candle-lit front room, all of them watching as Derek allowed them into the den. There were three of them, all young, maybe late teens. Stiles recognized the blonde from earlier and gave her a nervous smile. She was the one calling that they should be killed; he would have to watch his back around her. He just wished Derek hadn't been able to find _all_ their weapons when he made them surrender them at the door.

"Isaac," Derek called and one of the betas, the one with sort of wavy, curly hair, jumped at the tone. "You're on new-wolf duty while we sort this out. I'll keep an eye on the human."

"We have names," Stiles pointed out sorely.

"I don't really care," Derek told him without looking back, moving past the betas and toward a back room. "Keep up. In fact," Derek corrected himself, turning to face Stiles. "I don't want you out of my sight until I've figured out what I'm going to do with you, got it? If you get out of my sight and when I find you, I kill you. Clear?"

"Crystal," Stiles said, his stomach a cold pit of fear. The werewolf wasn't joking; he wouldn't even think twice about killing him. Stiles was well-versed in combat, even hand-to-hand, but the idea of taking on a pack of surly werewolves with only his bare hands was not one he relished.

Derek snorted and turned back, still stalking through the house as if the entire world had offended him. Stiles and Scott hurried to follow him but Isaac reached out and stopped Scott on his way past. "You're with me, hot shot."

Stiles gave Scott a worried look, but his friend waved him off. "Go. I'll be fine."

Though he hated to leave him, Stiles didn't want to start off on the wrong foot with the werewolves, especially not with the vicious beta who had just become his keeper. So he left Scott there and disappeared into the dimly-lit back room into which Derek had disappeared. It took his eyes a moment to adjust and he was surprised at what he found.

The dark-haired girl from earlier was perched on the end of a very comfortable looking queen bed, the burly figure of the alpha stretched out before her. She was fiddling with the bullets that Stiles had given them and, from the looks of it, was trying to break one of them open. Considering the amount of force snapping a bullet would take, he wasn't sure how she thought she was going to do it.

Before he could open his mouth to mention it, Derek reached over her shoulder, took the bullet from her, and cracked the wolfsbane shell in half. The contents collected in his palm and he held them out to her.

She rolled her eyes at him and then plucked a lighter from where it rested beside her knee. Rather than take the wolfsbane powder from him, she lit it on fire in his hand. He grimaced as it scorched into his palm, flaring briefly before it went out. "Cute, Laura," he told her.

"Just do it," she snarked back at him.

Moving over to their alpha's side, Derek splayed his free hand over the alpha's shoulder, spreading the bullet wound open between his fingers. The alpha groaned, raising one hand to stop him, but Laura leaned forward and pinned his other shoulder to the bed. The two betas exchanged a glance and Derek took a deep breath.

"Peter, it's Derek," he said loudly and the alpha's eyes opened to look at him. He looked like death warmed over, black lines spider webbing out from the wound, his skin ashen. Stiles knew some of how the wolfsbane worked; when the infection it caused reached their heart - and it did so quickly from a chest wound like this - the heart would seize and cease to beat. The alpha before them was done for and Stiles couldn't see how the burnt wolfsbane in Derek's palm was going to change that. "This is going to hurt, but you have to let me, okay?"

Peter nodded blearily and Derek overturned his palm above the wound, making sure the ash covered it. Almost immediately Peter began to writhe, shouting hoarsely, the wound smoldering as though it had been set on fire as well. Stiles' eyes widened as he watched the black lines retract, watched the infection bead up on the surface of his skin as it leeched from the wound. Derek accepted the towel Laura passed to him and began to wipe it clean.

A moment later, Peter lay still, chest heaving, but the wound was already closing up, knitting itself together even as Stiles watched. "Wow," Stiles breathed, then looked startled that he had spoken aloud. It drew everyone's attention to him, a fact which he instantly regretted when he saw the look of fury on the alpha's face.

Only Derek and Laura's hands on Peter's shoulders stopped the alpha from surging up from the bed to kill him once he realized what Stiles was. Stiles scrambled backward toward the door, trying to prepare for a fight he would surely lose.

"A human!" Peter snarled, lashing out at Derek and Laura both. They held firm, dodging the swipe and keeping him from leaving the bed. "You brought a _human_ into our den!"

"Peter!" Laura shouted at him, slamming both hands into his chest. It did little to move the alpha, but it did catch his attention. "Peter calm the fuck down! He brought us the kid you bit!"

That seemed to startle Peter for a moment and he turned to Laura instead. "He _what_?" Peter asked harshly. Realization seemed to dawn on him the moment the words were past his lips, however, because he turned to regard Stiles with a new, terrifying sort of calm, eyes narrowing. "Alive?"

"Yeah," Derek confirmed. "Alive."

Stiles wasn't exactly sure what was passing between the werewolves in that moment, but the weight of its importance was very nearly crushing. He did his level best to stay pressed up against the door frame, making himself as small and unobtrusive as possible, the only defense mechanism he had at the moment. It would really be the worst way to end his already terrible day, getting smeared across the floor by a pissed-off alpha werewolf.

With a certain amount of chill calm, Peter brushed Derek and Laura's hands from his shoulders, leaning forward to get a better look at the human in his doorway. "What do they call you, boy?"

"Stiles," Stiles answered immediately, somehow not choking on the fear crawling up his throat. They had always talked about hunting down something as big and bad as an alpha werewolf but he suddenly found himself acutely aware of how much power the creature before him really had and how powerless Stiles had been made. The thousand different ways this monster could kill him rested uncomfortably between them, making Stiles just a little dizzy.

The wolf's nose wrinkled. "Odd," he commented before looking to Laura. "And I'm supposed to believe Stiles here didn't remove his co-worker from this plane of existence after he was bitten?"

"Best friend," Stiles corrected before he could stop himself. Peter shifted his gaze back to Stiles, who swallowed thickly. "He- he's not my co-worker. He's my best friend."

"You're aware your best friend is about to become one of the things your kind hunts?" Peter inquired, like it was the weather forecast.

"Yes." Stiles could feel the hair on his arms standing up under that intense stare. "That's why we're here. If we went back, they'd kill him."

This seemed to give Peter a moment of thought, staring hard at Stiles. Finally he raised an eyebrow and shook his head just a tiny bit. "Your people have policies about this sort of thing. Those policies say you should have killed him yourself."

"Sir, no offense, but... those policies can eat me. There'll be a tag on my toe before I'd betray a friend like that," Stiles told him, mouth dry. He straightened a little, because this was one thing he was sure about; he would protect his friends to the bitter end. "Especially Scott."

Both Derek and Laura looked from Stiles to Peter, obviously awaiting a decision. Derek had made the deal with Stiles and Scott but he was not the alpha in this situation. His word was not what Stiles would need to stay amongst the pack with Scott, not even what Stiles would need to survive the next five minutes. Stiles' life literally hung in the balance, awaiting Peter's decision.

"You'd make a good wolf," Peter conceded at last and Stiles nearly choked on the laugh of relief that spilled from him. "Where is his friend?" he inquired of Derek.

"With Isaac," Derek answered.

"Fine," Peter acknowledged. "Laura, get Boyd and Erica to help you with dinner."

Laura shot to her feet with a curse. "I completely forgot!" Then she tipped her head and Stiles thought he heard someone say something from a few rooms over. He jumped when Laura answered in a normal voice. "Thank you, Vernon."

Werewolf hearing, Stiles wondered to himself. Documents at camp said it was amazing but he had never witnessed it first hand like that.

"I assume you'll be staying for dinner at least," Peter said smoothly as Laura disappeared from the room, leaving the trio alone. The alpha was clambering to his feet, examining where the bullet hole had closed completely on his shoulder. There wasn't even any sign of a scar, no mark on his skin to indicate he had just very nearly died.

"Uh," Stiles said intelligently, looking at Derek. No one had made mention of the deal Derek had put forth, so there was no way for Peter to know that the pack had been saddled with a human burden for the next few weeks.

Derek stepped forward, putting himself between Peter and Stiles. "He's going to have to stay longer than that. We can't send him back alone as long as we're keeping the other one."

"Oh, can't we?" Peter asked, recognizing the challenge in Derek's statement.

Derek didn't back down. "No, we can't, Peter," he said firmly. He shook his head, eyes narrowing. "Are you even thinking about the pack anymore? Are you even _trying_? Whatever's gotten into you lately, it's like you've just... like you've given up," he finished, voice softening over the last few words. "You're going to get us killed."

For a moment Peter glared at Derek, a storm in his eyes, but he glanced at the human soldier in the room and seemed to get hold of himself. "This is not a conversation we need to be having right now. The boy can stay the night," he said firmly. "We will discuss this later."

Even Stiles could see it was on the tip of Derek's tongue to push whatever the issue was between them, but Derek merely took a deep, calming breath, and stepped aside, casting his gaze down. Submitting. Peter observed him for just a moment longer than necessary before turning his attention to Stiles.

"I'm going to check on your friend. I suggest you come along," Peter said, making it clear that it was not, in fact, a suggestion at all and in no uncertain terms did Stiles have a choice in the matter. Stiles looked to Derek, which only seemed to irritate Peter. "Now."

Stiles jumped and nodded. "Oh my god, yeah, go with you. I got it."

Peter snorted and brushed past him, heading for the room where Scott had been taken. It was two doors down the hall on the left, past a bedroom that looked almost unused. Their arrival did not seem to startle Isaac, though Scott looked surprised to see them all invade the room at once. He had shucked his shirt and Isaac had him on his back on the bed, examining the bite with careful fingers. Both of them regarded the newcomers with silent stares.

"Well?" Peter prompted.

Shrugging one shoulder, Isaac motioned to the wound. "I give it another three to four hours before the healing really kicks in, but it _will_ kick in. He'll turn."

"Wait, there was a chance he wouldn't turn?" Stiles asked from behind them. "Like, maybe he'd stay human?"

"No," Peter said lightly. "But there's always a chance the bite will kill you instead. It would seem fortune is on your friend's side."

"What!" both Stiles and Scott exclaimed. Scott was faster on the uptake. "What if it wasn't going to take?"

"Well, then you wouldn't have been our problem for long," Peter told him with a smile. "How fortuitous that isn't the case. Isaac, get him cleaned up and join us for dinner."

"What about me?" Stiles asked uncertainly. Derek had told him that he would watch over him, but it was clear that Peter was actually in charge. Stiles didn't want to find out the hard way that Derek's plans weren't going to work out.

"You?" Peter echoed. "You're Derek's stray. He can keep an eye on you, I think."

* * *

Stiles glanced up when Morell reached across the table, pressing the stop button on the recording device again. "Something wrong?"

She regarded him in silence and he could see her trying to organize what she wanted to say. Maybe she thought she would offend him. He didn't find it likely. "They spoke rather... flippantly about you and about your friend's life," she admitted finally. He could tell it bothered her.

"Yeah," Stiles conceded, nodding. "Yeah, I mean, Peter did. He'd lost a lot by then. Maybe it was easier to deal with life if he just didn't get attached."

"And the others?" she asked, meeting his golden-brown gaze.

He rolled one shoulder, like it didn't really matter. "Lady, we were on opposite sides of a war. Six hours earlier we all would've killed each other without a fuss and now we're getting ready to sit down to dinner?" He huffed, the closest he'd come to a laugh in years. "Yeah, it was kind of fucked up. But none of us really had a choice right then."

"And later?" she pressed.

A strange little smile twitched the corner of Stiles' lip as he shook his head, because she just didn't understand at all. "Do you want to hear the story or not? You already know the ending."

Pursing her lips, she pressed record.

* * *

Dinner was not the _most_ awkward event of Stiles' life, but it did come fairly close. Isaac gave Scott a fresh change of clothes, as Scott's were torn to shreds beneath his body armor - a lot of good the stuff had done him against werewolf claws, Stiles noted. Then they had followed their assigned captors to the dining room where the blonde, Erica, and the last beta, whom Stiles assumed was Boyd, were setting the table. Stiles trailed to a stop in the doorway, staring with furrowed brows, because this was... normal. It looked so _normal_.

Derek noticed he was lagging, and turned to look at him. "Going to join us?"

"I- Yeah," Stiles said, shaking his head a little. "Yeah, I just... I dunno."

"Not what you were expecting?" Peter asked as he took a seat at the head of the table. "We don't tend to eat our meat any more raw than you do, boys. Have a seat."

Erica snorted at the suggestion but no one seemed to notice except Stiles. She had fixed him with a derisive stare and he could practically feel the weight of her judging him. Swallowing his discomfort, he moved into the room and slid into a seat as far as he could get from Peter without actually sitting in Derek's lap at the opposite head of the table. He knew he shouldn't feel _safer_ being close to Derek, but safety was quickly becoming a relative term. At least Derek wasn't actively considering his murder.

Derek's eyes slid sideways to Stiles, just the briefest flicker before he picked up the scrap of fabric that was serving as a napkin and placed it on his lap. Stiles hurried to follow suit, acutely aware of Peter's gaze on him from the head of the table. He was relieved when the alpha's attention moved on, settling instead upon Scott, who had taken a seat across from Stiles. Lips ashen and skin pale, Scott still didn't look so hot and by the way he was holding himself, his ribs were still broken. If they found themselves having to fight, Scott would not be much help.

"I don't think we've been formally introduced," Peter said, breaking the silence just as Laura and Boyd appeared from what Stiles guessed was the kitchen. "My name is Peter Hale."

"Hale!" Scott very nearly squeaked, eyes widening as his gaze momentarily met Stiles' over the food that was being laid at the center of the table. "_You're_ the Hale alpha?"

A pleased smile spread over Peter's lips. "I am. Heard of us, have you?"

Neither Scott nor Stiles breathed a word, but Stiles could read Scott's thoughts in his dark eyes. Word didn't travel well in their ruined world, but it did travel. There were rumors that a pack of werewolves had once ruled over the Beacon Hills area, its remnants chased out by the stresses of the apocalypse. They had been well known amongst the supernaturals before the apocalypse though, kept the town clean of any threats so that the humans would not discover them.

This was not enough to cause a stir on its own, of course. There were plenty of supernaturals stronger than a werewolf. Hell, some were stronger than a pack of werewolves. What had set the Hale pack apart was their relation to the Argents, the ruling hunters of Beacon Hills. When chaos and anarchy had reigned in the post-apocalyptic world, Gerard Argent had taken command of the area, kept the humans together. It had been his influence that had chased off the wolves, but he had lost his middle son in the process.

His boy had been bitten by the Hale alpha.

Gerard had put a bullet in his son's head himself.

After that, the Hale alpha's pelt carried a hefty reward and yet he sat at the head of the dining table as if nothing at all were amiss.

"Uh," Scott finally managed, clearing his throat. "Yeah, I guess. I'm Scott."

"Scott," Peter repeated, rolling the sounds on his tongue. "Just Scott?"

"To you," Scott replied, looking over with a glare.

Peter just smiled as the rest of the group - _the pack_, Stiles told himself - took their seats around the long dining room table. There were just enough seats. Stiles kept his hands folded in his lap, watching as the pack let Peter take first pick of the food before it began to make a circuit of the table. With his stomach still in such tight knots, Stiles took less food than he normally would have at camp, afraid of making himself sick.

None of the betas seemed particularly inclined to begin conversation and once food was on his plate, Peter rapidly became absorbed in consuming it. Stiles caught him observing his pack from beneath his lashes as he ate, and he wondered exactly how much trust was actually here. Derek had seemed pretty okay with challenging Peter's authority, after all. He filed the information under 'possibly useful' - even though he had no idea what use it would even possibly be - and set about his food.

After a while Stiles decided that wiggling his leg and pushing his food around his plate was not enough to sate his attention. The food was somewhat bland - not that he was complaining, the food at their base was _really_ bland - and the lack of conversation was gnawing at him, making him even more nervous to be there. So he blurted the first thing that came to mind, in an attempt to break the silence.

"Is there any way to turn him back?" He nearly clamped his hand over his mouth after he said it, knuckles whitening as he grasped the fork in his hands much too tightly. "I mean, not that you aren't all stellar conversationalists and fine people, but Scott has a life to get back to, you know?"

"Stiles!" Scott hissed, shooting him a glare full of daggers. "You can't just-"

"What?" Stiles bit back under his breath, glaring back. "Dude, we have to ask!"

"You want to know if you can change your friend back into a human?" Peter asked, drawing their attention.

Stiles swallowed, throat suddenly closed. He tried to clear it, fumbled with his fork a moment before dropping it with a clatter that caused Scott to jump. "Y-Yeah," he stammered, then cleared his throat again. "The camp has a... a _rumor_ that if you can... if you-"

"If you kill the one that turned you, you'll turn back?" Derek asked, stabbing at a piece of venison. He looked up, met Stiles' eyes and then Scott's. "No, that's a bullshit legend responsible for a lot of unwarranted deaths."

When both the humans looked confused, Isaac stepped into the conversation. "A long time ago, when hunting supernatural things was... well, sort of normal, you know, like a couple hundred years ago, hunters started this legend that if you kill the wolf that bit you, it cures you. Sometimes people got bit, by an alpha or not, and people would turn around and hunt down the pack to try and cure it."

"Genius, really," commented Peter from the head of the table, his cheek full of food. He looked up to find everyone looking back at him. "Well it was. The hunters didn't even have to try; whole villages were leaping to go mob our ancestors with pitchforks and torches."

"Is that why you came here?" Boyd asked, not even looking up from his plate. The question held no malice, only sedate curiosity. "To kill Peter?"

"No," Stiles said truthfully. All of the werewolves looked to him, listening to the steady beat of his heart with a bit of confusion. Stiles looked between all of them, wondering if he had done something wrong. "What?"

"You're not lying," Erica said, unable to hide her disbelief.

Stiles gave her a look. "Of course I'm not lying."

"I think what Erica is so eloquently trying to say," Peter interjected, "is that we expected you to make an attempt on my life."

Scott and Stiles shared a look. Both of them had known about the rumor, both had known that if the cure really was to kill the one that bit Scott that they absolutely would take action. Neither of them had really connected the dots, though, that it would mean attacking - and defeating - the alpha that sat so benignly at the head of the table. It had been a sort of abstract idea, just a possibility unconnected to the reality of the pack around them. If anything, it was an idea which involved stamping out a wild animal, a vicious monster. That they could do.

Not this.

Not a group of human forms, seated around an old oak dining table, eating off of actual plates with actual silverware. Not civilized, sentient beings. Not a _family_.

"We didn't even know if it would help," Scott said at last, uncomfortable. "If it would work."

"And now that you know it will not?" Peter asked idly, pausing with a forkful of wild mushrooms lifted just off his plate.

Scott shrugged at the same time as Stiles. "The only cure waiting back home is a silver and wolfsbane bullet through the heart," Scott replied.

"We're not your _last resort_," Erica snapped.

"Erica," Derek reprimanded sharply. She scowled, turning her glare on him before looking away, lips pursed. He took a breath and let it out slowly, placing his silverware on either side of his plate. He had everyone's attention by the time he looked up to Peter. "We made a mess. We're going to clean it up. All of us. You all remember your turning phase. Scott has got a longer one than any of you, and he's going to need your help. Unlike you three, he didn't have a choice."

"You had a choice?" Scott asked incredulously. "You _chose_ this?"

Before Erica could open her mouth again, Isaac butted in, obviously trying to keep the affront out of his voice and not doing a very good job of it. "We were on our own, before," he told Scott. "I was thirteen when Derek found me, almost a year after the end. I was dying, starving. Half froze to death on the side of the highway, and Derek picked me up and brought me to the house the pack was staying at, and he and Laura and Peter saved me. When Peter offered me the bite, offered me a safe place to live, to share his family with me, of course I said yes."

"But you..." Scott shook his head just a little. "You're not human anymore. You can't go back from that."

"Who says I want to?" Isaac asked, tipping his head just a little, brows furrowed. He looked hurt. "You've lived amongst the humans. They treat you any better? You said it yourself, that they'd just as soon shoot you if you went back now. Do you feel like a monster? Do you think you deserve that? At least if I became human again, my family wouldn't turn on me."

An awkward silence settled amongst the gathered until Stiles cleared his throat, his voice low. "He's got a point, Scott. What are you going to tell Allison?"

"What do you mean, 'what am I going to tell her?'" Scott echoed. "The truth, of course."

"You kind of can't," Stiles told him, as if it should be obvious. Scott gave him a questioning look and Stiles gave him a helpless shrug in return. "Think about who her grandfather is... who her _father_ is. I mean I know she loves you but... Dude, I'm not sure she'll be cool with this."

Scott looked like he was going to be sick. "She has to be," he breathed. "I have to go back."

"What if you _can't_?" Stiles asked softly.

Scott shook his head, mouth working but no words coming out. Finally he just gave a little shrug of surrender. "I... I'd rather take that bullet than live without her. So, first I figure out how to control this, and then we cross that bridge when we get there."

"Geezus. Okay," Stiles said, rubbing one hand over his buzzed hair, elbows on the table. "Okay, then. We'll sort it out."

"Touching," Peter said dryly and both boys startled as they recalled where they were. Stiles smiled weakly.

The dark-haired girl - Laura, Stiles thought - pushed away from the table, picking up her empty plate. She reached for Erica's plate next to hers and moved to head back to the kitchen without saying a word to any of them, lips pursed tight. Stiles wondered what was in there, as the house had no electricity to speak of, and certainly no running water. Though the humans had gotten the small Beacon Hills power plant running at a low capacity a year and a half ago, the power didn't extend past the edges of the camp, at least not yet. Certainly not this far.

Curiosity got the better of him and he pushed away from the table as well, picking up his plate and taking Scott's from across the table. "I- I'll help with the dishes," he explained when he noticed all the wolves giving him the same strange look. Peter just shrugged. Either he didn't care or he figured Laura could take care of herself. Probably both, Stiles figured.

The kitchen was oddly lit when Stiles reached it, and after a moment he realized it was because there was a fire burning where a stove had once been. The stove had not gone far, sitting unplugged and desolate at the far edge of the kitchen. Where it had resided, an alcove had been _broken_ into the ground from what Stiles could see, the pit framed by blackened, splintered floorboards. A ragged funnel to the outside directed the smoke through the wall to the outdoors. A steaming cast iron pot of some sort rested in the coals, the dark liquid inside bubbling gently.

Laura watched him as he entered, eyes tracking up and down his form as he set the dishes on the counter. Nervous, he shifted from foot to foot before indicating the dishes and then the pot. "I want to help," he told her. "If that's okay."

Her lips pursed for a moment and then she rolled one shoulder in a shrug. "You'll have to cool the water, then," she said.

He watched as she crossed to the fire, lifted the pot from the coals with her bare hands and poured the steaming water into the plugged sink. It hissed as it hit the cool metal and she waved her blistered hand through the steam. Stiles watched wide-eyed as her skin healed and she looked sideways at him with a small half-smile. He wisely decided not to call her out on showing off for him.

"I'll fetch the rest of the dishes," she told him. "Cold water is in that bin there." She indicated a large, plastic storage bin in front of the stove. "Try not to burn yourself. We don't have anything to treat you with."

With that, she vanished from the kitchen and Stiles caught the sound of dishes and silverware clinking, chairs scraping as the group abandoned the table. He took a deep breath and then grabbed a clean bowl from the counter, dipped it into the bin, and carried it back to the sink. The water in the sink steamed as he added the colder water, and he quickly dipped a finger in to test the temperature. By the end of the bowl it was bearable, if still a touch too hot. He dumped the plates into the water and plucked up the dish rag hanging over the faucet.

Silently, Laura returned and added more dishes in a pile beside the sink. She settled her hip against the counter to his right, taking clean dishes from him and wiping them dry with a towel that was, itself, questionably clean. It was awkward, he thought, but not bad. At least she didn't _seem_ to hate him, smiling softly at him any time he risked glancing over. Slowly he began to relax, to be comfortable in her presence, just in time to reach the end of the dishes. He passed her the last fork and wiped his hands dry on his pants.

"Thank you," she told him with a polite smile. He nodded, returning the smile as she placed the fork on the pile of washed silverware. With a little tip of her head, she indicated he was free to go. "And, Stiles?" she added as he scooted toward the exit. He looked back, one hand reaching up to stop himself against the doorframe. "If you betray my family, I'll skin you. Alive. Good night."

He swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to ignore the way all of the hairs on his arms and neck rose at the threat. Absolutely she could, and she would- her tone left no doubts about that. He actually jumped when he felt Derek lay a hand on his shoulder. "Oh my god, don't sneak up on people like that!"

"Scott will be bunking with Isaac for the night," Derek told him, ignoring the admonishment. "You're with me, where I can keep an eye on you."

Sighing, Stiles followed Derek through the house, back to one of the rooms they had passed earlier. Derek lit a candle, probably more for Stiles' sake than because he couldn't see, and surveyed the room. As far as Stiles could see there was one messy little twin bed and not a lot of other space; the room looked like it was more for storage, or an office, than a bedroom. There wasn't even a closet, although a small writing desk was crammed into the corner. Derek shuffled Stiles into the room, passing him a pillow and a blanket from the bed.

"You're on the floor until we figure out another arrangement," Derek told him.

"Oh, but... there's a couch in the back room," Stiles pointed out, because he had seen it and it looked comfortable enough. He wondered if anyone else was using it as a bed. He wondered how many of the wolves slept in the beds of their pack mates. He tried to stop wondering why there was no one in Derek's before that thought got away from him.

Derek's eyes were cold blue when he turned to look at him. "If I catch you out of, or leaving, this room without permission, I will kill you."

"Well, that's really comforting," Stiles told him dryly. "I'll sleep well knowing you're so vigilant."

Derek rolled his eyes and snuffed out the candle between his fingers. Moonlight streamed in through the window across the room, just enough for Stiles to see his silhouette as he stripped out of his shirt. Stiles clutched the pillow to his chest, attempting to ignore the way his heartbeat sped up watching Derek kick off his shoes. Derek's fingers paused at the button of his worn jeans, his head lifting slightly. When he looked over his shoulder at the human, Stiles practically fell over himself dropping to the floor and pretending he was very busy making a bed out of his one blanket.

Snorting, Derek climbed into bed without taking off his pants, a fact for which Stiles was very grateful. He was equally grateful that the werewolf chose not to mention any peculiar scents he may or may not have discovered, or the speed at which Stiles' heart was beating. He just let Stiles make a little nest in the corner and attempt to sleep in peace.

It was a while, however, before Stiles realized that sleep was not going to come to him. He was exhausted, bone-weary and sick of consciousness, but the buzz in his head would not leave. Over and over and over he replayed the events of the day. How innocently it had started, just a routine surveillance trip, three miles out and three miles back in a pattern. But they'd found those paw-prints and he'd let his best friend get bitten by a werewolf. Not just any werewolf, but the most-wanted werewolf of Gerard-Freaking-Argent, their overly vicious camp leader. Now he was here, prisoner of what appeared to be the first beta in the Hale pack, and he had no idea why he hadn't been chased off or killed.

"Hey, Derek?" Stiles asked quietly, unable to let his doubts rest. He knew the werewolf could probably hear him if he just thought it loud enough. When he got no response, he sighed and sat up, bunching the blanket up around him. It was freezing in the house. "I know you're awake."

"Go to sleep," Derek scolded, cranky.

"It's cold," Stiles dismissed, pulling his legs up and leaning back against the wall. He shuffled the blanket up around his chin. "And I can't stop thinking that... I just- why are you keeping me? I mean, I know it's so I don't run back and give away your pack. But, you didn't have to let me live."

"Neither did you," Derek replied. Stiles looked up as he shifted, pale eyes opening. The moonlight reflected white in his pupils. "I don't like to be in anyone's debt."

"Oh," Stiles said softly, looking down. "I guess we're even then."

Derek stared for a moment longer, and then closed his eyes, rolling onto his back. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"For what?" Stiles asked.

"For what Peter did to your friend," Derek explained. "The bite is supposed to be a gift."

"Some gift," Stiles remarked quietly. "Scott's got a family, you know. A wife. A kid on the way. His mom's probably worried sick. Your alpha gets in an accidental nip and it's all over for him. Can't go back now."

"It shouldn't have happened," Derek agreed. "But it wasn't an accident."

"What are you saying?" Stiles demanded, looking up.

"I'm saying Peter knew what he was doing," Derek continued. He was obviously uncomfortable, his voice low and gravelly like he hated every word. "I'm saying he did it because he thought you'd kill your friend and there'd be one less hunter on our tails."

Stiles let that sink in, the thought that he could possibly have even considered killing Scott, that someone was _depending_ on him being so closed off that he could murder a friend in cold blood. Of course, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that it was the rule. He knew that if you got bit or infected by a supernatural _thing_ that could turn you - shape-shifters and vampires being high on the list - that your team mates were not supposed to hesitate. He knew, too, that anyone at base would expect that he would immediately destroy Scott to keep him from becoming a threat.

But...

"I couldn't," he murmured. "I never could have."

"I know," Derek admitted. "The moment you let us go, I realized you would let him go, too. You're... different." His voice dropped on the last word, as if embarrassed he'd noticed.

Stiles chuckled, because he'd been hearing _that_ his whole life. "Guess so."

"Good night," Derek said, and Stiles could recognize an order when it was given.

* * *

The quiet click of the recorder broke the silence after Stiles finished talking. Morell checked the tiny timepiece on her wrist and nodded slowly. "We went over a little," she informed him. Their eyes met and she twitched a smile. "I'd love to go over by a lot, but I actually have to get to a meeting."

Stiles nodded, accepting that she would be gone. He closed the leather journal, slid it across the table to her so that she could package it up again, take it away from him. It was just a tool to her, a means to an end. The years of Stiles' life written on its pages meant nothing to her, couldn't possibly mean the same as they did to him. It wasn't her mate that had written it, wasn't her soul bound up in the tidy script.

Instead, she laid her hand on top of it and moved it back across the table until it rested against his knuckles. He looked up, surprised and wary, afraid to even hope.

"Why don't you hang onto that, overnight?" she suggested, packing the rest of the material up into the folder, placing the recorder on top. "Might spark some memories to share. If you're up to it, I have a lot of free time tomorrow. We could continue."

He gave a little shrug, knowing it wouldn't matter. If she wanted him here tomorrow, he would be here tomorrow. If he had to wait a week to try this again, he would wait a week. As long as he left the cuffs around his wrists, his schedule was what they told him it would be. He didn't mind; it wasn't like he had anything better to do.

Sympathy scrawled across her features for a moment. "I could bring decent food," she offered. "Make it a lunch date."

Slowly, he nodded. "Okay," he agreed, voice scratchy from talking for so long. "Thank you."

As he watched her walk from the room, he hated himself for agreeing. The pack shouldn't belong to anyone, not even her, but the feel of Derek's journal clutched to his chest felt too good for him to really care. It was relief, embodied, to feel so close to Derek again, if even for such a short time, even so superficially. He knew he shouldn't thank her for it, but his gratitude was visceral, bone-deep, and he let himself have this because it had been so long since he'd felt anything but anger and loss.

When the guard came to take him back to his room, he went quietly.

* * *

_I don't even know where to begin about my day. Peter bit a BHC kid in a fight. He thought - we all thought - that his pack would kill him before he could turn. But they didn't, they brought him HERE. One of them did, anyway, and they want our help. Of all things, our _help_. What do we do with that?_

_ Peter doesn't seem to care what happens to them. Or us. I've separated the newcomers for him, for now. Isaac is caring for the pup, Scott; he worked Erica and __Vernon__ both through their transformations so he should be okay with the new kid. I took the human in myself and I already regret it. His teeth chatter so loud Erica came in to tell me to shut him up- she didn't care how._

_ So now he's in my bed where it's warm and it's going to reek of human by morning. Fantastic. I guess it's my own fault, for taking him prisoner in the first place. I should have just killed him. Should have just killed them both, and moved the pack like we've been planning. It would be better for everyone. Safer._

_ Maybe Peter is right._

_ Maybe I am getting soft._


	3. Chapter Three

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

**Chapter Three **

Blue-grey light suffused the room when Stiles woke, just enough for him to see the figure half-sprawled on the wooden chair beside the writing desk. He groaned and threw an arm over his eyes because it was Scott, because it was always Scott when it was way too early to be awake. The little huff of laughter Scott gave was almost enough to make Stiles forgive him for disturbing his dreams. They had been lovely dreams about being places that were not sequestered inside a den of werewolves. He missed them.

"Feeling better?" Stiles asked, voice scratchy with sleep. He glanced over from beneath his arm.

Shifting to turn his side to Stiles, he raised his borrowed shirt away from his hip. Beneath, the skin was smooth and unmarked, no sign of the bite the alpha had inflicted or of the bruises that had been forming on his ribs the day before. Stiles wanted to be glad for it, to see his friend whole again, but he knew what it meant. Scott really was turning and there was literally nothing he could do about it. He forced himself to smile anyway, because Scott was looking at him with expectation bright in his eyes.

"You're going to need a superhero name, Wolverine," Stiles joked.

Scott snorted. "Yeah, right. We can make a cape when I get back." He let the shirt drop back over his skin and put an elbow on the desk, resting his cheek on his fist. "Thanks for staying."

"You woulda stayed for me," Stiles pointed out, shrugging it off as he sat up. It occurred to him that he was in a bed, not the floor, and he gave Scott a strange look. They were _alone_ in the room. "Where are the wolves?"

"Most of them went hunting, I think," Scott informed him, motioning vaguely with his free hand. "Isaac is here watching us."

"Can you... hear him?" Stiles asked tentatively. He wasn't sure how fast werewolf powers would progress.

Tipping his head, Scott listened hard for a moment. "I can hear that... he's... not in this room."

Stiles threw the pillow at him and Scott burst into peals of laughter. "Apparently becoming a werewolf hasn't improved your sense of humor," Stiles surmised, though he couldn't help but smile as well. Relief settled deep in his gut to see that his friend wasn't changing into something he didn't recognize. It was still Scott seated across the room from him.

"It hasn't improved much of anything," Scott told him when his laughter had died away. "The healing is nice but I don't really... feel much different. Isaac says it takes longer the further a 'turnwolf' is from their first full moon."

"So you... you might be pretty normal for a few days at least?" Stiles asked. "Like, maybe we could go back?"

"To camp?" Scott wondered. "Not likely."

"Why not?" Stiles demanded, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "It would be perfect if we could get back for just a day or two. We could bring the team out too, say that we're... say we're hunting the alpha. Pack for a week or more out. No one would miss us then, no one would come looking."

"Yeah, and these guys?" Scott reminded him, motioning at the house around him. "Where do you think they'd be by the time we showed up again? They're already not keen on having us here."

Stiles' shoulders dropped, because Scott was right, of course. Derek had made it clear that if it weren't for Scott and Stiles, the pack would have been on its way. If they left, even for a day, the werewolves might move on without them and they would be right to do so. "Okay, so what then? Jackson and Danny are only going to be able to keep them out of the woods for so long. I figure maybe two days, three tops. What then?"

Scott rubbed his hand over his face, scrubbing at one eye tiredly. "I don't know, Stiles. I mean- Hey. Did they take your walkie?"

After a brief head-tilt to determine the answer, Stiles slithered out of the bed and scooted over to where he had fallen asleep the previous night. What equipment hadn't been confiscated by the grouchy beta was in a pile that he quickly sorted through until he found the item. Triumphantly, he held up the battered, red walkie talkie like he'd found the holy grail.

"Guess not! Why?" he asked as he passed it to Scott.

With a twist of the knob, Scott turned the device off and passed it back. "Okay, so in a couple days we can turn that back on and get someone on the line. We just tell them we got chased pretty far off the reserve and we had to take shelter somewhere, but we're on our way back."

"Great, so that buys us a day," Stiles reasoned, trying not to be too sarcastic.

"Yeah, well it's a day we didn't have!" Scott snapped, getting testy.

Sighing, Stiles buried the walkie talkie back in his equipment. "Look, I'm sorry," he apologized, not meeting Scott's eyes. He knew both of them were just stressed. He knew nothing they said or planned was going to change that, but snapping at each other wouldn't help either. "Okay, so we have three days to make nice with the mutts, and then we're S.O.L."

"Pretty much," Scott sighed.

"It helps when you don't call us mutts," came a voice from the doorway. Both boys jumped and Stiles practically fell over himself whipping around, his hand grasping for the knife at his belt that wasn't there anymore. Isaac smiled at them from the doorway, leaning against the frame, his arms crossed over his chest. "We're not animals."

"We didn't mean-"

"I know what you meant," Isaac interrupted before Stiles could make any further excuses. "You've got a pretty terrible plan."

Scott and Stiles exchanged glances. "You heard?" Scott asked.

A smile curved Isaac's lips. "You'll learn how good werewolf hearing is soon enough."

"We don't want to escape," Scott began. "It's the opposite! We have to let the camp know we're okay or they'll be out looking for us. They'll find your pack."

"I know," Isaac agreed, nodding. "It's a really bad idea, us taking you in. Dangerous. Stupid. Likely to get us all killed, honestly."

Both boys wore identical expressions of confusion. "But then... why?" Stiles managed first. "Why let Scott stay? Why make me stay?"

Isaac shrugged, giving a little huff of helpless laughter. "Beats me. Peter and Derek have both lost their minds if you ask me."

"Isaac... what would you do if we left?" Scott asked softly. "If we walked out right now?"

"I'd let you," Isaac told them earnestly. "You're not prisoners. Well, you're not, Scott. Your friend is as long as you decide to stay here. Sorry, Stiles." He gave Stiles an apologetic look.

Stiles twitched both hands in a way that said there was nothing any of them could do about that. "Hey, I made my choice," he said easily. It was just a simple statement, an acceptance of his fate. "I'd make it again."

* * *

"Is that still true?" Morrell asked, interrupting the story. Stiles tilted his head, a habit he had picked up years ago. "Would you make the same choice again, knowing how it ends?"

Stiles scrunched his face a little. "You mean would I put a bullet in Scott's head instead?" he asked. There wasn't malice in the question; he knew how humans thought and he had gotten past blaming them for it long ago. "Or are you asking if I'd walk away, knowing it would keep my pack safe?"

"Either," she said, raising one shoulder in a little shrug. "Both. Aren't they the same thing?"

"No," Stiles told her, picking at the sandwich in front of him. He hadn't had food this rich in a long time; freshly baked, coarse bread, soft goat cheese, and dry, thinly sliced meat that Stiles guessed was bear. Probably something that had wandered too close to the camp. He looked up, met her eyes. "If I'd betrayed Scott, I would have been the sort of person I couldn't live with being. If I'd walked away, I would have missed the years I got with them."

She paused with a thick, baked chip grasped between two fingers. "Were they worth it? Those years?"

"Every moment," Stiles answered without hesitation. "If I were going to change anything, it wouldn't be going with them."

"It would be coming back," she guessed. His lips became a thin line and he dropped her gaze.

"No," he murmured. "I had to come back. But they didn't."

* * *

Stiles was sitting on the kitchen counter, his legs pulled up under him, a cookbook spread open on his lap when the pack returned. Their movement through the trees caught his eye and he looked up, craning his neck to see out of the kitchen window as they approached. Boyd and Erica were covered in blood and a young deer was slung over Boyd's shoulder like a towel at the gym. He peeled away from the others, heading around the side of the house with Erica trailing after him. Stiles closed the cookbook and set it on the counter before unfolding his legs and hopping down.

"Scott!" Stiles called, heading for the front room. "Isaac, they're back!"

Derek was first through the door, opening it much more roughly than was strictly necessary. Across the entrance room from Stiles, Isaac froze at the sight of him, eyes wide. Lacerations covered his right arm and side, deep and sticky with blood. One eye was swollen shut and he was favoring his left leg. Behind him trailed Peter, in better condition but worse disposition, his left arm clutched to his chest. Stiles couldn't be sure, but he thought it looked broken.

"Wha- what _happened_?" Isaac breathed as the two trudged past. Derek halted in front of Scott, who had just arrived from Isaac's room in the back. Scott scrambled to get out of the way, eyes wide as he looked to Stiles in question.

"Fight," Derek mumbled through clenched jaws.

"With _what_?" Isaac exclaimed. "You two look like hell!"

"Each other," Peter supplied helpfully. "Derek seems to think I can't lead the pack."

"You can't!" Derek snarled, wincing when the movement jostled his injured jaw. "You've been doing a piss-poor job for months now."

Swallowing, Isaac stepped forward to help Peter, but Derek stepped between them with a grimace. "Derek," Isaac chided.

"He can suffer for a bit," Derek snapped, casting a glare in Peter's direction. Peter returned it with a snarl that was drown out by Derek's own. For a moment it was a stand-off that raised the hairs on Stiles' arms and neck, the sort that could break into a small war at any moment. Then Peter dropped his gaze, submitting, and Derek gave a breathy, irritated growl. "Get out of my sight."

Without another word, Peter skirted around Derek and disappeared into the back of the house. Stiles and Scott exchanged another glance and then both looked to Isaac for some sort of cue, but Isaac was still staring wide-eyed at Derek, frozen. Wavering on his feet, Derek watched Peter until he was out of sight and then the fight seemed to drain out of him. Before he could hit his knees, both Isaac and Scott dashed forward, catching him as he collapsed. Isaac ducked under his arm, hefting him back to a more-or-less vertical state.

"His room," Stiles suggested and Isaac nodded.

They shuffled him through the house and into his room, dumping him on the bed. He groaned and managed to get himself into a sitting position, one hand splayed across the seeping wounds over his ribs. "You... still look like hell," Isaac commented again, drawing everyone's attention to the obvious; Derek's wounds were not getting better.

"Why aren't you healing?" Stiles blurted out.

"Alpha wounds," Derek said raggedly. He sat up a little straighter, snagged the lead edge of his shirt and began to pull before he winced. "I think my shoulder's out."

"I can fix that!" Scott exclaimed. "I can patch up most of this, actually. My mom taught me a lot when I was younger and I've been learning with the camp's med team."

Derek chased Scott's hands away from where they had begun picking at his shirt, at the wounds, and scowled. "It'll heal," he growled.

"Before you bleed to death?" Scott asked dubiously. There was already a lot of dark blood coating his clothing, more seeping out from every rend in his hide. When Derek didn't answer, Scott turned to look at Isaac. "Is there any chance we could get clean, hot water and some cloths? Maybe a needle and thread if you can find it."

Isaac's eyes flicked to Derek for permission, and though Derek rolled his eyes, he nodded his approval. Isaac disappeared from the room. Taking a deep breath, Derek straightened again. Both Scott and Stiles watched with rapt attention as his nails lengthened, turning into razor-sharp claws. Recoiling slightly, they watched as Derek slowly shredded what remained of the shirt, rather than try to take it off over his head.

His skin was a mess and Stiles could see off-white, bloody bone peeking through the wounds over his ribs. Though the effect was miniscule, the skin was beginning to regenerate. It would probably be hours before even the shallowest of wounds would heal entirely. The deeper ones looked like they would take longer, maybe a day or two, if he didn't start healing faster. He looked to be focused entirely on drawing breath in and out and just staying conscious.

"Why's it healing so slow?" Scott asked, looking up to Derek's eyes.

"Wounds from an alpha heal slower," Derek ground out. "It's for dominance."

"You can't pick many fights with your alpha if you can't heal faster than them," Stiles surmised. He shrugged when both of them looked his way. "Well you can't."

Scott turned back to Derek. "So, what? You picked a fight with... uh..."

"Peter," Stiles supplied.

"You picked a fight with Peter out there?" Scott asked. "Why?"

Derek's eyes flicked to Stiles for a heartbeat, then jerked back to Scott. "It's none of your business. It's over now."

"Did you win?" Stiles asked, softly, not sure what he wanted the answer to be.

"Barely," Derek answered, wincing as Scott picked at a loose flap of skin and drew fresh blood. "Watch it, kid."

Scott snorted. "Kid, right. Like you're so old."

"Older than you," Derek told him.

"I bet you're not even thirty," Scott challenged. When Derek scowled, Scott smiled. To his credit, he did not push the issue.

From the doorway, Isaac cleared his throat and everyone turned to look. He held up a mixing bowl of warm water and a handful of mostly clean dish towels. Stiles got to his feet to fetch them, toting them over to set beside Scott on the floor. Thanking him, Scott dipped one of the towels in the water and wrung it out partway, then set about the task of cleaning the skin around the wounds.

"Thread?" Stiles prompted of Isaac, who was standing still watching. Isaac rolled his eyes, but he ducked back out of the room and a moment later Stiles could hear him rifling through the house a room over.

They sat in silence while Scott cleaned, Stiles watching every swipe of the rapidly reddening rag over Derek's pale skin. The wounds looked much better in the dim lighting of the bedroom, with the grime of drying blood being washed away with every swipe of the cloth. There were only a couple left that, with his healing, could even use stitches.

Derek hissed when Scott pressed a wet cloth to the edges of the worst of the wounds and Scott paused, looking up. He swallowed, suddenly seeming to realize his patient was actually an alpha werewolf, capable of tearing out his throat without even really trying. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not- I don't think I can fix that one. He _crushed_ your rib here."

"I know," Derek gritted out between clenched teeth. "Got my leg as well."

Scott and Stiles both leaned to the side in the exact same way to get a better look at Derek's left leg. His pant leg was soaked in blood, the fabric and flesh both shredded to ribbons. Stiles winced, but he tried to be optimistic. "At least he didn't get your achilles tendon, right? Would that heal, if he cut it?"

"Yes," Derek replied. "Eventually."

"Would it hurt?" Stiles asked, then looked taken aback. He hadn't meant to say that out loud. "I mean, healing. Does it hurt? Or do you have, like, built in painkillers?"

"It hurts. A lot- especially for broken bones or severed tendons," Derek told him, holding out his arm for Scott to clean the bite wound near the elbow. Luckily, it didn't look like Peter had pulled out any chunks, just chomped down hard.

"What if you lost an arm?" Stiles continued, suddenly curious. "For example," he added when Derek gave him a look. Stiles made a chopping motion against his own arm, as if Derek might not have understood the question.

"I found thread," Isaac said as he stepped into the room, interrupting the awkward Q&A before Stiles managed to dig himself any deeper of a grave. "And a needle, but it's just a sewing needle."

"No first aid kit?" Scott asked, accepting the needle and spool of thread as Isaac passed them off to him.

Isaac shrugged. "Ah, not here. The house had been gone through when we got here. Humans took things useful to them."

"Including any first aid equipment," Stiles concluded aloud. "That's the first thing we look for when we go on retrieval runs with the scouts."

"There's uh... something else," Isaac said, shifting nervously when Derek looked up to him. "I went to check on Peter and- and I think he's gone."

"You checked the rest of the house?" Derek asked, tipping his head to one side. It took Stiles a moment to realize that he was probably listening for Peter.

"Of course," Isaac replied with a little nod. "I went around back to ask Boyd and Erica, but they didn't see him. Which means..."

"Which means if he left, it was for the north," Derek finished.

"Toward camp?" Stiles and Scott exclaimed together, then looked at one another. Stiles swallowed and gave one shoulder a shrug. They couldn't leave without Derek's permission now and even if they could, they couldn't warn the camp without giving away that they were fine.

Derek shook his head. "I don't think he'd be that stupid," he said. "He's injured."

"He'll heal faster than you," Stiles objected. "He could be healed by the time he gets there!"

"He won't," Derek assured him, assured _both_ of them. "Some of the wounds, sure. But I hurt him after he surrendered too. Those won't heal for a long time. Days."

"After?" Scott asked, a little horrified. "Like, you won and you still hurt him?"

Derek scowled. "I had to," he explained. "If he had only beta wounds to fix, he'd have challenged me the second they were healed. The pack would be right back where we started. Isaac," he continued, switching modes. "Tell Erica and Boyd to look for a scent trail and then check the house over again. Make sure you check the damaged section too, I caught him sulking in there last week."

With a nod, Isaac disappeared again. Derek looked down his arm at where Scott was stitching up the bite wound. "I'm almost done," Scott told him self-consciously.

Though his lips pursed, Derek nodded. He kept his head tilted to one side, clearly listening to his pack as they moved. Stiles strained to hear, caught the click of the back door and the faint echo of voices as Isaac called out to the others. He watched as Scott sewed through Derek's skin, pushing together lacerations with the fingers of his free hand. It was fascinating, watching the wounds begin to knit together once the edges touched. They would have healed, Stiles knew, but with Scott's aid they looked like they would be healing faster.

"There," Scott said, biting off the end of the thread. He sat back on his heels and looked up to Derek, who was inspecting the sewing job.

"That... that's pretty good, actually," Derek admitted grudgingly. He met Scott's eyes and nodded a little. "Thanks."

"Sure," Scott said, dumping the bloody towels into the water bowl and lifting it as he stood. "I'll just uh- I'll just put these in the kitchen."

Stiles and Derek watched him go and then Derek began poking at his injuries. Blood seeped out of the smaller wounds and Stiles scrunched his face with a rough noise. "Gross," he said. "Quit touching it."

"Don't tell me what to do," Derek snapped, but he stopped.

"I wasn't, I was just... whatever," Stiles dismissed, holding up both hands in surrender. It was obviously not a good time to be pushing Derek about leadership, so Stiles changed the subject. "Why'd you do it?"

"Do what?" Derek asked, not looking at him.

"Challenge him," Stiles said and Derek froze. "You had to know you'd get hurt. You had to know he'd get hurt. You had to know there are going to be people looking for me and Scott. You could have left us if they showed up before but now... Peter's missing and you're hurt and... Do you even know where Laura is? She wasn't with you. Your pack's kind of a mess, more of a mess than if you'd left Peter alone until after the full moon. So... why?"

Derek refused to meet his eyes. Stiles let him sit in silence, let him decide what he wanted to answer, because he wanted the truth. Finally Derek sighed, ran his good hand through his hair and gave his head a little shake. "I did it because he was going to come back and-" He looked to Stiles, then dropped his gaze back to the floor. "He was going to kill you. Kill you, leave Scott for your camp to find, and move the pack on like we'd been planning. And I couldn't let him do that."

"It would have been safer for you guys," Stiles pointed out. His stomach had knotted up at how easily Derek spoke of his death, like it was just a bullet point in a strategy he was reciting.

Looking up, Derek met his eyes, gave a nod of grudging acceptance. "Probably," he agreed. "But it wouldn't have been right."

* * *

"He saved you?" Morrell asked, tipping her head.

"Yeah," Stiles confirmed, nodding slowly. "Scott too."

"Why?" she pressed. "You'd only been there a day. Not even."

Stiles frowned, because he asked the same questions once upon a time. The werewolves of lore were bloodthirsty, vicious beasts. They would have killed any human who crossed their path, even hunted them down to tear them to shreds. When his team went out, once upon a time, they had been certain they were destroying monsters, protecting families. Less than a day amongst a pack of werewolves, and Stiles had realized that they may have been protecting some families... but they may have been destroying others.

"I know," he said at last, picking at his thumbnail. "I don't think he knew why he did it, either. Maybe he would have done it anyway. I mean, he was already at odds with Peter when we turned up. Maybe we were just a good excuse. A catalyst. I don't know. What I know is that he did, and I'm thankful he did."

She pursed her lips, clearly wanting more of an answer, but she simply nodded. "Okay. Fair enough. So Derek became an alpha, and Peter...?"

Shrugging, Stiles sat up a little straighter. The rich food from their lunch was upsetting his stomach. Worth it, he thought. "The pack spent the rest of the day looking for the trail. Peter did his best to keep away from them; he covered his blood scent, he found a stream and walked in it for a couple miles. They had to turn back before dark."

"Before dark? Why?" she asked. "They were werewolves, a whole pack of them, and hunting teams like yours kept the area clean of threats, didn't they?"

"Sure, yeah," Stiles agreed with a shrug. "For three miles out, the area was ah... sterile, you could say. But they couldn't range safely into the camp's crosshairs, and, well, to be perfectly honest, there was a lot of bad shit in the wild. Things that never came near the camp, things that we didn't even have words for back then. When the apocalypse hit, yeah, the supers that hunted us, hunted humans, came out in the open. But so did the things that hunt supers. Things that made meals out of werewolves- even a whole pack of them."

She drew back a little, sitting up straighter like maybe one of the creatures would suddenly appear in the room as Stiles' tone implied. "I see," she said. "I- I've never come across anything that bad."

"We did," Stiles said solemnly, a heavy admission. "More than once."

Nodding, she put her elbows back on the table, leaning closer to him. "So, carry on, then," she encouraged. "You asked Derek where Laura was. Was she okay? Was Derek all right?"

Stiles let out a small noise that sounded remarkably like a chuckle at her absorption in his story. "Laura was fine, she'd just gone looking for non-meat foods. Derek, on the other hand..."

* * *

Stiles stood in the darkened, empty kitchen, leaning against the granite counter as he watched out the small window behind the sink. The pack had returned hours earlier, empty handed and in a foul mood, reacting to Derek's emotions as if they transferred directly. Stiles and Scott had made themselves small, hiding out in Derek's bedroom together and talking quietly about whether this change in alphas changed their plans. Stiles didn't think so, Scott wasn't as sure.

Stiles hated disagreeing with Scott.

Though the rest of the pack had milled around the house for some time after they returned, Derek had crashed out early. Laura had assured them that this was okay, that his injuries had probably forced him into a regenerative trance. She had directed Boyd to finish butchering their kill and told them to start curing half of it because they were not going anywhere soon. Erica went to help him and Isaac stayed with Laura to sort what she had hauled back to the house from wherever she had gone.

When all of them had finally retired, Isaac taking Scott from Derek's room at the last moment, Stiles was left alone with an unconscious and injured werewolf alpha. For a while, Stiles had sat against the wall, watching the rise and fall of Derek's chest and thinking about everything that Derek's mutiny would mean for them. But his legs had started cramping and it was freezing in the room still and it wasn't like Derek would wake up in time to find him gone.

So he had gotten up, fluffing out his blanket and laying it over Derek before he left. At first he had just been stretching his legs, wandering around the house in the dark. He had seen Boyd and Erica curled up together on the biggest, fluffiest couch before he actually walked into the room, so he was able to keep from waking them. He hadn't come across Laura and assumed she was behind one of the closed bedroom doors. With nowhere else to meander, Stiles had headed for the kitchen to get a glass of warm water to hold and possibly return feeling to his fingers.

The coals for the kitchen fire were still glowing and he had moved a little bit of wood onto them, stoked it with the iron poker resting against the stove until he had a nice little fire. He was tired, exhausted really, and had sat down in front of the little fire, holding his hands out over the heat as his eyelids drooped.

When he woke, he was actually a little startled that he hadn't fallen face-first into the coals and gotten the house set on fire. He scrubbed at his eyes and traced a finger over the imprint the kitchen cupboard had left from where his forehead rested against it. Darkness still blanketed the world outside the window but pale grey had begun to lift it and the fire had burned to coals once more. Stiles sighed and put the kettle atop the embers like he had planned hours ago, then clambered to his feet.

As he was shaking out the pins-and-needles feeling in his legs, he froze. Cocking his head, he listened closely until he heard it again.

"Sti~les..."

He swallowed, looking over to the window. The voice was outside, hauntingly familiar. It was Scott's voice filtering in through the fire's vent, the one that lead to the outside. Stiles couldn't fathom why Scott would be outside, or how he had gotten past Isaac to get there, but he sounded distressed and he was calling for Stiles.

"Stiles... Stiles!"

The name turned frantic, pained, and Stiles took off for the front door without another thought. He skirted around the dining room table, rounded the corner and had his hand on the knob of the front door before another voice halted him.

"It's not Scott," Derek said from somewhere behind him.

"What?" Stiles asked, hesitating with the knob turned, gripped in a white-knuckled grasp. He looked over his shoulder to see Derek leaning haggardly against the doorframe of the dining room.

"Scott's asleep," Derek told him, raising his nose a little. "In Isaac's bed if I'm not mistaken. I can hear their heartbeats."

"But- I can-" Stiles shook his head, let the knob go before turning to face Derek. He took a deep breath and let reason set in before he continued. "I can hear Scott calling," Stiles told him reasonably. "If it's not him... what can do that?"

A slow smile spread over Derek's lips and he pushed away from the door frame, pulling a chair out from the dining room table. "It's a crocotta," he explained as he sunk down gingerly into the seat. "A canid super, kind of a- a hyena on steroids. They hang around a place or follow travelers and learn their names. Then they mimic a human voice calling out the name, to draw you away from your home or your group; away from safety."

Stiles looked sick, because he had almost walked out of the house and into the jaws of such a creature. "Then they kill you?"

"Slowly," Derek confirmed. "They like to eat bits while you're still alive and screaming. Not something you want to meet alone at night."

"You've been saving me an awful lot lately," Stiles told him, stepping hesitantly into the dining room. He smoothed his hands over the back of one of the big, old chairs, feeling the grain of the wood.

"Maybe stop getting yourself into trouble," Derek suggested, shifting to get more comfortable.

Stiles laughed, but quietly so they wouldn't get caught. "Yeah, that's unlikely. It follows me around like a grim on a trail. You should have let me leave yesterday. Maybe you wouldn't be beat to hell if it was just Scott."

"Maybe," Derek agreed. "It was really only a matter of time, I think. I'd have gotten hurt with or without you. Scott got me patched up quicker than if you two hadn't been here."

"How's that going?" Stiles asked, motioning to Derek's injuries. "Laura said you were in a coma or something, to heal better."

Derek reached down, pulled up the side of his shirt to reveal the worst of the injuries. Though Stiles could still see pale bone in the moonlight, the wound was closing around it now and there wasn't fresh blood. Stiles nodded and Derek dropped the garment back over the injury. Scrubbing a hand over his buzzed hair, Stiles scooted around the edge of the chair and took a seat in it.

"You know, I think I've heard of a crocotta before," he said softly, folding his arms on the table. "Maybe not around here, but sometime. Isn't it an African legend, though? Like, aren't they supposed to live there?"

"Yeah," Derek said, nodding. "They aren't naturally from here."

"Are they supernaturally here?" Stiles asked, putting his chin on his arms.

Leaning back in the chair, Derek shrugged. "Don't know. Seen a lot of things around in the last few years that have no business being around, at least not here. Guess the apocalypse really screwed things up for everyone."

"You think supers got... what, transplanted?" Stiles guessed.

"Transplanted, sure," Derek agreed. "Summoned. Shifted inter-dimensionally, maybe. Awoken, in some cases." Stiles raised an eyebrow and Derek smiled. "East of here, in the mountains- I take it you've never been there?"

Without lifting it, Stiles shook his head, his voice distorted from the way his throat was stretched. "What's out there?"

"Dragons," Derek told him. "The nasty, western ones. That's why you don't see many people from east of there coming out this way. The mountains were hazardous enough when they were just terrain."

"You've been through them?" Stiles wondered aloud.

"Twice, actually." Derek smiled, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "We crossed over just after the apocalypse started, to get away from the hunters on our asses. Peter bit one of them and they slowed down to deal with it. Then we spent almost five years roaming what's left of the world east of here."

"What _is_ left of it?" Stiles echoed. Communication post-apocalypse was almost dead and Derek was right; the number of people from beyond the mountains that had arrived to Beacon Hills Camp could be counted on his fingers. Most of them had come from just over the mountains, hoping to find California had been protected from the destruction.

"More than you'd think, less than you'd hope. The end was... supernaturally intense in some places. Rifts opening where they shouldn't. Creatures appearing where they'd never been. The east coast up to the Smokies is underwater," Derek explained. "Ah, there's a- a chasm splitting a good portion of the northern US away. You can still get to Idaho and Minnesota around the edges, but you can't cross to anything in between without going around."

"Can't go to the bottom?" Stiles asked.

"Don't know," Derek said with a shrug. "Can't see the bottom and even if you got there, how'd you get back to the top?"

"Fair enough, I dunno," Stiles agreed. "And Peter, he lead you guys through all of that safely? I mean, for someone as... unstable as you made him sound, that seems like a pretty big feat."

Sighing, Derek looked down. "He wasn't always unstable," he explained. "Back when all of this started, when hunters nabbed my parents and most of the pack got eaten up by misfortune in the face of all the destruction and insanity... Peter saved us, my sister and me."

"You lost a lot of family?" Stiles asked softly.

"Everyone lost a lot of family in those first few months," Derek replied. "I lost my parents, my little sister. Peter lost his mate, his two little boys. We almost lost Laura in the attack that got her little girl and her mate. But whose story doesn't have loss, at this point?"

"Mine," Stiles said, and Derek looked up to him. "I lost my mom before the end. It was just me and my dad, and," he shrugged one shoulder. "Well, we both made it."

"No friends?" Derek asked.

"Before Scott?" Stiles laughed, but it was sharp and barbed full of hurt. "I was kind of an outcast. I was that kid that had panic attacks about his dead mom, the one who played too many video games and couldn't find common ground with anyone."

"And then Scott," Derek concluded.

"And then Scott," Stiles agreed. "He found me and my dad wandering the woods near the camp and brought us in. He was kind of weird too, but the right kind, you know? The kind I could be friends with, the kind I could trust."

Derek hummed a note of agreement, rubbed absently at his ribcage with a look of discomfort. Outside, the faint notes of Stiles' name echoed through the darkness, followed by Derek's name and a soft, eerie cackle. Both boys looked toward the boarded front window, but there was nothing to be seen through the slats of wood.

"That's not intensely creepy at all," Stiles commented quietly. Derek chuckled.

"It sounded like Peter," he observed.

"It's not, right?" Stiles asked, a little worried. "It's just your- your hyena thing. Crocotta."

"Yeah," Derek confirmed. "It knows Laura and Erica's voices too. It's been hanging around for a few days now. Peter said he was waiting until it left to move out, so that it wouldn't track us."

"And then we showed up," Stiles commented softly. Derek just shrugged, because there was nothing either of them could do about that now, and they both knew it. "Where do you suppose he's gone, anyway? Peter, that is."

"Hopefully not far." Derek sighed and stopped picking at his ribs. "Realistically? He's free now. He doesn't have to lead us, doesn't have to be responsible for us. I think that's what he wanted. Whatever he's doing, he couldn't do it with us around his ankle."

"Do you think he'll go for the camp?" Stiles didn't want to ask the question, didn't really want to hear the answer. There wasn't anywhere else that Peter would be going, but he had to hear it.

But Derek just shrugged. "Maybe. That's a awfully large target for one beta. My guess is that if he _is_ heading that way, he'll realize it's a bad idea before he actually gets in trouble. He's probably out running."

"You think he'll be back?"

"I think he'll find us when he's ready to find us," Derek told him. "Maybe it'll be here, maybe it'll be down the road sometime. He hasn't had a chance to run free for a long time, and I think he needs it. I just hope he doesn't do anything stupid."

"Like attack the camp," Stiles suggested.

"Yeah," Derek agreed. He shook his head slowly before clambering to his feet. Though he turned in the direction of his bedroom, he hesitated. "He wasn't always like this," he told Stiles again. It was almost defensive.

"It changed people," Stiles offered. "The apocalypse. I get it."

Derek nodded, accepting that for what it was. "It changed the pack."

"It's changed everyone," Stiles said with a small smile. "But, you know, not all change is bad. Sometimes it makes us stronger."

For a moment, Derek considered that, just staring silently at Stiles until the human was slightly uncomfortable. Finally he let out his breath and the ghost of a smile twitched over his lips. "Your water is boiling," he told Stiles. "Don't stay up too late."

"What happened to 'leave my room and I'll kill you?'" Stiles teased, hiding his own smile.

With a little shrug, Derek turned away again. "You're welcome to try your chances with the crocotta," he suggested, then disappeared into the darkened hallway.

* * *

She gave him a soft smile when he paused in his storytelling to pick at the crumbs on the plate before him. "I take it Peter didn't make it back," she offered after a moment, as if maybe he'd forgotten why they were there.

"No," Stiles confirmed. "He really didn't."

"This would have been... what, two months before you left?" she queried, picking up the folder in front of her.

Stiles knew that it was full of history, _his_ history to be precise, but he had never actually read through any of it. He didn't need to- he knew his history, after all. But watching her sift through the papers, covered in the handwriting of someone he knew, someone that had taken his accounts during debriefing once upon a time, he wondered what the camp thought of his actions, of his past. What had they guessed about him, after he'd stopped talking?

"A little less, I think," Stiles corrected, stretching his neck just a little to read the words on the page. They were upside down, but Stiles had done enough reading in his life that it didn't matter. "It was..." His eyes rolled to the side, counting as he tried to remember. "Three weeks to the new moon, plus another moon after that before we left, so yeah. Why?"

"Oh, it just- it coincides with the alpha attacks that happened around that time," she pointed out. "Those were Peter?"

"Well, they were Peter, but he wasn't an alpha anymore," Stiles corrected again. "We found out it was kind of the reason he was here, why he came back to Beacon Hills. His family used to live here, before... well. Gerard killed them, or at least most of them. Peter never got to avenge them, because the apocalypse hit right after, and then everyone was so busy surviving, and then he couldn't-" He halted abruptly, because he wasn't sure she needed to hear any of this. It was all ancient history in relation to what she'd come here asking after.

"It's okay," she assured him. "You can talk about anything you need to, to tell your story."

Somehow Stiles doubted that was true, but he shrugged one shoulder. "Peter wasn't a bad guy. I mean, he did bad things, but I think the stress just- just ate him up. Derek had a theory that Peter started turning betas, started searching out people who were alone on the road to turn, so that he had something to do to keep his mind off of the loss. But... by the time Scott and I turned up, Derek and Laura had a pack. I mean, they had a pack before, but, this was the sort of pack that could survive without Peter. That's what Derek thought maybe he'd been doing all along- making sure that Derek and Laura could make it if Peter left to come back here. He was taking care of them so they'd be okay if he..."

When he trailed off, she nodded slowly. "He wanted them safe, in case he lost."

"Yeah," Stiles said, his voice edging up at the memory. Peter had always made him nervous, even when he did return, but that didn't mean he hadn't been a part of the pack. It didn't mean Stiles didn't miss him, too.

"He... made quite the impression," she said carefully.

A strangled, incredulous laugh escaped Stiles. "We-heh, okay, _impression_ is not the word I'd use for two slaughtered scouting groups and a handful of other murders, first of all," he told her with a strange smile. "They were good people. I knew two of them."

"I'm sorry," she responded, in the fashion that people do when they hadn't been expecting to offend someone. The sort of tone that said she wasn't really sorry, and they both knew it.

"It was a long time ago," Stiles dismissed, looking down. "And I'm sure you read about it."

"Yes, extensively. Your camp keeps very good records about the supers it encounters and what damage they do," she told him, looking down to sift through the pages in the folder again. She missed the tilt of Stiles' head, the narrowing of his eyes.

"The," he said, without inflection.

"Pardon?" she inquired, looking up to find him staring at her with furrowed brows.

"_The_ camp," he stressed, watching her closely.

"Yes?" she agreed, not following.

"You said _your_ camp," Stiles said slowly, watched the panic flicker in her eyes, and he knew. His eyes narrowed dangerously now. "You're not from this camp."

She swallowed thickly and he could see the debate the moment before she shook her head. "No, I'm not," she conceded at last. "I arrived about a month ago with an... let's say an _interested party_."

Stiles took a slow, deep breath and released it just as slowly before shaking his head. "I think we're done here."

"Stiles..."

"No," he told her sharply, slapping the table with the flat of one hand, enjoying the little jump she gave. Wherever she was from, it was sheltered. Interesting. "You lied to me. You were going to keep lying to me. So no. We're done here."

He knew that his refusal to continue would cost him. He knew the journal that lay on the table between them would be taken away with her when she left this time. That he would go back to his locked room in the belly of the old hospital, and Harris would come back next week and maybe that would be the end of it for Stiles. Maybe this woman had a point, when she asked if Stiles was tired of solitary.

Maybe he was.

But she just let out her breath, nodded in acceptance, and scooped up the documentation, sliding it into her folder before pressing the stop button on the recorder. She slipped out of the chair, clambering to her feet with resignation. "Okay," she murmured, soft and understanding and something within Stiles constricted. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry. It was not my intention to hurt you, Stiles. You've had quite enough of that."

Stiles couldn't drag his eyes away from the table, from the hard plastic cuffs encasing his wrists. When he failed to answer, she tapped the folder on the desk, looked him over once more, and then turned and left. The door clicked heavily shut behind her and a moment later opened again, the guard that had been just outside the door entering. Stiles closed his eyes, listened to the man's boots on the metal floor, sighing when he felt the warmth of a hand on his shoulder.

"Come on," said the man. It wasn't an order, just a gentle encouragement.

Sliding his cuffs off the edge of the table, Stiles leaned back so that the man could unlock them from the floor. He didn't resist when the man laid a hand on his elbow and got him to his feet, nor did he object when the man picked up Derek's journal in one rough hand. He just silently accepted the gift, clutching it to his chest as he was lead out of the room in the opposite direction as the woman. The halls were dark but familiar, a maze Stiles could have navigated with his eyes closed.

They reached his room a few moments later and the man fumbled for his keys in the dark. Stiles could have made it easier, but he just stood there instead, shoulders drawn forward just slightly, protectively, until the door swung open. Then the man stepped to the side, allowing Stiles entrance with a sweep of one arm, presenting the makeshift cell to him, his smile laced with regret.

Stiles took a breath, held it for a moment, and then stepped into the doorway. His golden-brown gaze tracked up as he stepped into the room, settling upon the dark figure seated on the edge of his bed. He let out the breath in a rush, eyes closing as he stepped into the room. The door swung shut behind him, the lock clicking into place from the outside. Stiles listened to his keeper pace heavily away, out of earshot, before he looked up again.

Pale eyes met his, and his heart gave a little twist.

"Hello, Derek."


	4. Chapter Four

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

**Chapter Four **

"Hello, Derek," Stiles greeted dully, turning away from the open space on the bed beside the wolf. He let his back hit the wall in the corner of the small room, sliding down it until he had a shoulder to each wall. He didn't bother to stretch out his legs, tucking the journal into the warm cavity created between his chest and thighs. With a sigh, he folded his arms over his knees and put his head down on them.

"They let you keep my journal," Derek stated softly.

"Yeah," Stiles mumbled, not looking up. He hated that tone, the way Derek wouldn't accuse him of anything, leaving it to Stiles' own guilt to gnaw on his conscience. He wasn't up to it today. It was just too much.

"Because you told them," Derek continued. It was almost a plea, and Stiles wished he could shut it out. He wished covering his ears did anything to help. "Why are you telling them, Stiles? You said you wouldn't. You promised."

"I know," croaked Stiles, throat tightening on the words. He didn't need this right now, not after trawling through memories, opening old scars. "I know, okay? Please just... don't. Not today."

He thought that might be the end of it, by the way silence wreathed around him like a haze. Closing his eyes, he tried to force himself to relax, to just breath in the comforting scent of the old leather journal in his lap. To let go of everything he had dredged up today for the scheming woman, of every betrayal of his oath to never tell a human about his pack. It hurt, old wounds picked open anew, and he just wanted to sleep. He just wanted to close his eyes and set his mind on autopilot to nowhere and forget.

"Haven't they taken enough?" Derek asked quietly. It seemed so loud in the tiny room, even when he didn't raise his voice. It didn't echo like Stiles' voice, and that was the only way Stiles could tell the difference some days.

Stiles groaned and unfolded his arms, covered his ears with his forearms. "Derek, please..."

"Do you have to give them our past, too?" Derek insisted.

"I'm not," Stiles argued, voice climbing in distress. He hated this Derek. He hated the soft, injured tone, the accusations laced into words that sounded tired and pitiful. Derek never sounded like that before. "I'm not going to talk to her anymore. I'm done."

"She doesn't think so," Derek told him, and it seemed so reasonable the Stiles believed him. He didn't want to, but he did, and it left something cold and heavy in his gut to think that he would talk to the woman upstairs again. "She let you keep the journal. She's going to bring you back up there. Are you going to tell her the rest? Give up everything else?"

"No," Stiles swore, barely a breath, like maybe it wouldn't be a lie if he just said it quietly enough. If he threw his heart into believing it. "You're safe, Derek. They can't get you anymore. So, please..."

"Stiles," Derek called softly, and Stiles curled up tighter on himself. He didn't have to look up to see the frown, the regret in Derek's pale eyes.

"Please, just leave me alone, Derek," Stiles pleaded, voice cracking. "I can't do this right now. Not today." He hated repeating himself, knew it made him sound crazy, but sometimes it was the only way.

The silence that followed was heavy and absolute this time and Stiles let himself count to ten before lifting his head. Derek was gone, no sign left that he had ever been in the room. Stiles' shoulders sagged, though he wasn't sure if it was from relief or disappointment. Sometimes he hoped that there would be a sign, that there would be so much as a wrinkle in his bed sheets, a boot scuff on the dimpled floor. Anything.

He knew it was impossible.

Derek couldn't leave traces of himself in places he'd never really been.

Stiles swallowed against the lump in his throat, palming away the wetness at the edge of his eyes, and rested his forehead back upon his forearms.

* * *

Morrell let the door click shut behind her, eyes sweeping up from the floor to the woman leaning against the doorframe across the room. Short, blonde hair, amber-brown eyes, and a smile like a shark closing on a blood trail. When she tipped her head in question, Morrell shook her head in response, surrendering, frustrated, and the woman twitched her a brief smile. "It's okay," the woman said, straightening and crossing to meet Morrell halfway.

"How long have you been standing here?" Morrell asked.

"Not long. Just long enough to see you crash and burn," she teased, holding out a hand and twitching her fingers in a _gimme_ motion. "How was it going before that?"

"Honestly?" Morrell asked, passing over the documents in her hands, sliding the recorder off the top of them. "The guy's a mess, Jane. He's holding it together, but I can't tell you how. He trails off randomly, staring into space. He veers off topic mid-sentence to start talking to himself. I've lost track of how many times I've had to steer him back to the story. Then there's moments where he's just... crystal-clear lucid. I'm beginning to think those are the worst, when you know he remembers everything."

Jane shook her head, sighing as she began to thumb through the documents. Of course she already knew what all of them were; she'd been responsible for obtaining most of them for Morrell to use. She was looking for what Morrell scribbled while Stiles spoke, notes about his movements, notes reminding her what to look into next, what to ask him when she saw him again.

"I'm not surprised, if what we've heard is anywhere close to the truth," Jane said, slipping a yellowed piece of paper from the middle of the stack. The blue lines had faded nearly to white, but Morrell's handwriting was crisp and stark, fresh from the last session.

"Are you having any better luck?" Morrell asked, not quite daring to hope.

Jane ran a hand through her short cropped hair and gave a little head shake. "Not particularly. The girl's not talking at all yet, and their council is still deciding if they're going to let us see their records or not."

"And if they don't?" Though she didn't want to ask, Miranda knew that it was a real possibility that they would only have the two prisoners. It didn't look to be particularly promising from what they had seen so far, although she was managing a lot better than it seemed Jane was. "We need them, and these people aren't going to just let us walk out of here with them. If no one wants to cooperate with us..."

"You're right, of course," Jane conceded quickly, before Morrell could finish the thought aloud. She shuffled the folder to one arm and reached inside her vest, withdrawing a tattered, old envelope from the breast pocket. With a smile, she passed it to Miranda. "Try that," she suggested. "See if it changes his mind."

"What is it?" Morrell asked, weighing it in her hand without opening it. The envelope was not sealed, but if Jane had wanted her to open it she would have said so. As it was, she could see a square, dark patch in the center of it.

"A photo," Jane told her. She flashed a smug smile to her friend. "The girl may not have been talking, but she didn't mind me taking a Polaroid."

Miranda looked up in surprise. Yes, Stiles had told her he was done, but to jump straight from trying to explain herself to... this? "That's kind of going for the throat, don't you think?" she asked, worried. Jane hadn't been sitting with Stiles for as long as Morrell had and she still didn't feel like she could judge how he would take the presentation of such a gift.

"Perhaps," Jane agreed. "But these two are the only ones with answers. Even if we get into the records, we know they're missing a lot. We know these two didn't talk, and if we're going to get them out of here safely, that's got to change. So show him the picture, and ask for his help."

"And if it breaks him?" Morrell asked quietly. She didn't think she could stand to hurt Stiles any more than he had been.

Jane sighed, gave a little shake of her head. "Sounds to me like he's already broken. I don't think a picture's going to make it any worse for him. But it might give him a reason to talk. It might give him a reason to start mending."

"Or it might give him a reason to want out," Morrell pointed out with a twinge of apprehension. She had heard what Stiles was capable of, knew that if he decided there was a reason for him to be out of his bonds, he would be out of them. Then they would have a _real_ problem on their hands.

"Or that," Jane accepted with a shrug. She held up the files. "I'll take these back and see what I can get my paws on without permission."

Miranda rolled her eyes as Jane whirled around, heading for the exit. "Try not to get us kicked out?" she called hopefully after her.

* * *

Stiles sat atop the small, rickety bed, pressed into the corner, feeling both walls at once. There was not enough bedding to bunch up around himself, not enough that he could pretend the pack curled their warm, furry bodies all around him, but the walls sometimes came close, if he leaned against both of them at once. So he sat, the journal in his lap, a soft blue glow falling from the transparent rune perched in his palm. The darkness was otherwise absolute in his tiny, windowless room.

He wasn't allowed to have candles, not anymore, and they wouldn't direct power to this section just for him.

Sometimes he enjoyed the dark. It was free, kept him from feeling confined. If he couldn't see the four small walls, the cramped twin bed, the small bathroom attached to the room along the back corner, then he could imagine he was somewhere else. He could imagine he was in an old, abandoned house, waiting for the pack to return. He could imagine he was in a field under a blanket of clouds so thick he couldn't see the stars.

He could imagine he was anywhere but here, and sometimes that was the only reason he _was_ still here.

The page under his free hand was a mess of scribbles, a lot of wasted space, which was so unusual for Derek. Half the script was not Derek's tiny, clean print; it was Stiles' own chicken scratch, written at an odd angle, and he remembered the night well. He remembered laying coiled around Derek where he sat on the floor of that little abandoned house, a day out from El Dorado. He remembered batting at Derek's pen like a bored cat, wanting to go to sleep, unable to do so alone anymore.

He remembered the exasperated sigh, and the way Derek's entire attention shifted to him at once, and the blush that heated his skin because he hadn't really _wanted_ to make Derek _stop_.

Stiles traced a finger over the neat writing, the little swivels left every time he made a swipe at the pen and succeeded in bumping it. A smile twitched at the edge of his lips, unfamiliar, soft. The first words under Derek's print belonged to Stiles, had been written sideways from the floor, because Stiles hadn't wanted the betas to hear him.

_Come to bed!_

He remembered the little huff of patient laughter, the way Derek slid the pen from his longer fingers and wrote beside it in an attempt to conserve space.

_Soon. You _can_ go without me, you know._

_Can't sleep_

_Why are you writing?_

There were double lines under the question mark and Stiles could picture the little brow raise Derek gave him as he passed the pen back. Stiles had propped himself onto one elbow, practically crawling into Derek's lap to continue writing.

_Betas. If they hear me asking for cuddles, they'll want to join in and how will I get anything done?_

He had passed the pen back with his best impression of a solemn, straight face, knowing that Derek knew better. But Derek was indulgent of him, and so he just rolled his eyes with a breathy little laugh and scribbled down what he knew Stiles wanted him to say.

_Do? It's the middle of the night, what have you got to do?_

_ You!_

Or at least, it would have said 'you' had Derek not upended the journal before Stiles could even finish writing, rolling himself so that Stiles was laying half pinned below him on the floor. He'd set his chin on his palm on Stiles' sternum as Stiles folded his arms behind his head and met his gaze, enjoying the feel of Derek's free hand edging up under his shirt, skimming softly over his ribs.

"You are _so_ far beyond help," Derek had told him fondly. It was a favorite phrase of his, any time Stiles remotely asked for help of any kind.

"Is that a yes?" Stiles inquired, tongue in cheek, a grin on his lips as he raised both eyebrows in proposition.

He remembered that night, how soft it had been, how well he had slept with Derek curled into his side, snoring quietly. They had gone to sleep alone in the abandoned house's master bedroom, but Stiles remembered waking up to a face full of furry Isaac and Erica after they invaded anyway. He missed that, missed waking up with no room around him, with heartbeats under his hands.

Everything here was cold and static and dead.

He extinguished the rune, closing his hand over it as he folded the journal shut. Total darkness claimed the room in an instant, and he closed his eyes, letting the silence settle around him like a blanket. He hugged the journal to his chest, pressed back against the hard walls of the makeshift cell.

At least in the darkness, he could imagine he was not alone.

* * *

She sat in the empty interrogation room, legs crossed, one long finger tapping at the cool surface of the table. In her other hand she held the envelope that Jane had given her, thumb smoothing absently along the bottom edge as she thought. The folder containing all of his documents sat idle upon the table, atop a second, darker folder with yet more papers, these ones from Jane. She had woken Miranda early by tossing them very unceremoniously upon her chest with a shout and a smile. Sleep was still clinging to the insides of Miranda's eyelids as she waited.

It was worth it, though, once she learned what was inside the folder.

Across the room, there was a triple knock and then the door was swinging open. She straightened, uncrossing her legs and shifting so that she could fully face the table, be ready to move at a moment's notice. She tucked the envelope with the photo into her jacket, out of sight in case she didn't have to use it yet. In case he would talk to her without it.

When Stiles saw her he froze, the guard behind him bumping into him hard enough to cause him to stumble forward slightly. She expected the way his eyes narrowed, the deep breath he took, steeling himself for whatever course of action he'd already decided. Behind him, the guard made no move to prod him further into the room, either through experience or courtesy. Morrell wasn't sure which.

"Good morning, Stiles," she greeted, as calm as she could, not sure what sort of mood he would be in after the discoveries of the day prior. Thankfully she'd brought a peace offering, on the advice of one of the camp's residents. She waved a hand at the small wooden bowl on the table between them. It was full of strawberries. "I brought you breakfast."

Stiles scowled. "I'm not hungry." He flinched as he said it.

"You are," Morrell said softly. "And I was told you're very fond of strawberries."

He refused to look at her, his scowl deepening.

She sighed. "I know you don't trust me, and that's my own fault," she told him, speaking slowly, making sure he heard each word. He seemed lucid, if angry. "I should have told you I'm not from your camp, but I was given the impression that it would be difficult to get you to talk no matter where I was from. I thought that if you believed I-"

"You were misinformed," Stiles blurted out before she could finish, his gaze snapping up to look at her. She could see the surprise that brightened his golden-brown eyes. Obviously he'd meant to keep his jaw wired shut when it came to her, which would have been unsurprising considering the amount of silence he had endured for the past couple of years.

"Clearly," she agreed solemnly. "However, my offer is still valid. It is still on the table to you. I can still get you out." They wanted to get him more than just _out_, but she didn't want to give him false hope yet.

"I don't want out," he replied, but his voice caught on the words. She saw when his gaze slid sideways, the small hunch of his shoulders as he looked at something that wasn't there. She wished she could hear whatever it was.

A sad smile twitched the corner of her lip. "Everyone wants out, one way or another," she told him, drawing his attention back to her. He may not have wanted to walk free, but he didn't want to be here and they both knew it.

His gaze dropped, jaw clenching.

She sighed. "Look, Stiles," she murmured. "I know you're angry with me. I know that these people hurt you, took everything from you. I may not be able to tell you much about myself or where I've come from, but I _can_ tell you that I want to give some of it back to you."

"You can't," he snarled back. His head wove back and forth slightly as his eyes squinted shut, his shoulders hunching against some loud noise only he could hear. "Don't lie to me, I don't need more lies. Harris was full of empty promises."

"Okay," she conceded before he could get so riled up he lost focus. She needed him here, needed him present in body _and_ in mind. "He was, I agree. Stiles," she said, drawing his attention as it began to wander again. She was amazed at how bright his golden-brown eyes were when they met hers. She could see the wild in him, like a cornered animal. "I'm not going to hurt you. Come sit down."

Though he swallowed, he edged into the room, slid into the seat across from her. The guard that had accompanied him trailed patiently behind him, and Morrell was surprised that he had let them go through their back-and-forth without saying a word. Once Stiles was seated, the guard latched the cuffs to the loop bolted to the floor, and then left them to their own devices. Morrell watched Stiles through it all, saw the slouch of his body once he was trapped in place, the fight leaving him now that he was anchored. Whatever she had to say or do, in an instant he had resigned himself to the pattern of interrogation he'd been subjected to for the past two years. She hated it.

Reaching into her jacket, she pulled out the envelope Jane had given to her. She had hoped, however fleetingly, that she could get him to talk without it, but that seemed unlikely now. Laying it on the table between them, she met his wary gaze. When she nodded to the envelope, he looked away from her with a sort of stubborn resolve, hands firmly in his lap. She managed not to roll her eyes.

"Looking at it won't sign any contracts," she told him. "This is important."

His nose wrinkled like he thought she had no idea what the word _important_ meant, but his eyes fell down to the envelope, taking in the tattered corners, the smudges of grime on the surface. This was a well-used envelope, one seam ready to fall apart at a moments notice. Morrell supposed that there were not many real envelopes left in the world; it may have been a long time since Stiles had seen one.

"What is it?" Stiles asked finally. It wasn't quite a surrender, laced with suspicion.

She leaned a little closer, turning it over with one hand. The flap had no spring or resistance left to it, so when she flopped it open, it stayed there. The back of the photograph was visible, peeking out from the V of the inner fold. When he made no move to extract it, she slid it out with one finger, and then gently flipped it over for him to see.

His eyes snapped to hers, wide and disbelieving. "What is this?" he demanded, sharp and desperate.

"One of your... your pack mates?" Morrell asked, not quite sure what term they would have used to refer to one another. "Lydia Whittemore."

Stiles' eyes dropped back to the photograph, his hands still firmly in his lap, like if he touched it, she might disappear from it, or that it might be taken away from him. Morrell's heart gave a little twist when she noticed he was trembling. "Where- Where did you get this?" The words were barely a breath.

"It was taken a few days ago," she told him, slow and gentle. What she had to tell him was delicate information, the sort that could cause him any number of reactions, but he deserved to know the full scale of affect his choice would have. "From what I understand, she's being held in a similar fashion to you."

She let him process that for a moment, let him trace the lines of his pack mate's face, let him register that _a few days ago_ meant she was still alive. When he reached up to splay a hand over the photograph, she laid one smooth hand over his. When he looked up, eyes full of questions and hope, she offered him a tentative, fleeting smile.

"Your release includes hers. When we're done, you'll both be free to go."

* * *

Stiles could feel himself trembling as he tried to hold the picture steady in his hands. His vision blurred with tears but he couldn't unclench his fingers enough to let go, to wipe at them. In his chest, his heart felt like something had sunk in claws and twisted, howling at him that Lydia was alive, that some member of his pack had survived with him.

The only thought louder was that if she was alive, she was being kept alone, just like him. She was confined, just like him, without the comfort of another beating heart. Months and months, over two years alone with her thoughts, away from everything they had shared. He knew what that was like, what it did to a person, and he could barely breathe when he thought of Lydia having to go through it, too. Not after what she went through, not after what she lost.

Now, the woman in front of him was telling him that it was on his shoulders, that her fate, her freedom, was his decision.

All he had to do was give her everything he had left.

Through sheer force of will, he managed not to crumple the photo in a fit of anger. His eyes closed. "Fine," he spat.

The recorder clicked and whirred to life between them.

* * *

With Peter missing and Derek still healing, the entire pack stayed at home for most of the following day. Stiles spent much of it helping to cut and salt strips of meat from the deer the pack had brought down the day before, and helping to hang the curing meat in the cellar of the house. Boyd grudgingly explained to him how they had screwed hooks into the rafters above so they wouldn't have to worry about it touching anything while it cured. Stiles told him it was clever, and Boyd didn't scowl quite as much at him afterward.

"We're leaving before this lot finishes," Boyd confided to him as they threaded the last batch in the late afternoon. "I'm not sure what Derek thinks we're going to do with it. Can't pack it like this."

Stiles hesitated, glancing over, fingers sticky with meat slime slowing in their work. "You can't, ah... you guys don't have a cart or something?"

Boyd's brows furrowed as he looked over to Stiles. "What's a bunch of wolves going to do with a cart?" he asked, like it was a stupid question.

"Cure meat, for one," Stiles answered, poking out his tongue. It had gotten almost easy to converse with the werewolf, and it should have made Stiles uneasy. He just felt relieved; maybe Scott would be okay after all. "We had one, for a while, my dad and me. Um, after everything went to shit, it was us and a handful of officers from his precinct, and one of them used to be a hunter. His house was trash, but we followed him to a farm where he used to get his deer processed. We put together a sheltered cart, for food and stuff, and after a bit, we figured out we could, you know, hang meat to dry, too."

Snorting, Boyd turned his attention back to his strips. "Fancy," he commented, but he didn't do very well keeping the admiration from his tone. "Maybe you can show us before you leave."

The pit of Stiles' stomach gave a little, confusing turn at that. "Yeah," he said quietly. "I mean, of course it might not do you guys any good, if you're trying to move fast."

Boyd hummed his agreement and they finished stringing the last of the meat. They hung it at the border of the cellar, where the cement floor met a dirt addition and the walls turned to cobblestone. There was just enough room for all of the strips they'd made.

"You don't think anything will get in here, do you?" Stiles asked, fingers nimbly tying the string of the last strip to the last peg. He indicated with a tip of his head to the gaping hole in the addition, where the tree that had collapsed the portion of the house above them had broken through into the basement.

Shrugging, Boyd wiped his hands on one of the rags they'd brought down with them. "It's not safe," he replied. "Peter told us to stay away from it."

A frown creased Stiles' face, but before he could investigate the cobblestone-walled addition, Boyd had grabbed his arm and was propelling him toward the stairs. "But I just-"

"No," Boyd told him, but there was the faintest undercurrent of amusement. Stiles let himself be steered.

When they got upstairs, there was a commotion that had nothing to do with their prior task. Derek was snarling around the house, Erica on his heel talking quietly to him. Both of them had gone to patrol the area, to try to find Peter before he got into trouble. It looked like they had failed; there was blood on their hands, on their shoes, in Derek's hair. Boyd and Stiles exchanged a look, their own hands and clothes bloody from handling the venison.

Somehow Stiles doubted it was deer blood smeared crimson on their skin.

"What happened?" Stiles asked before he could stop himself.

Derek stiffened, whipping around on Stiles like was going to attack. Though he held his ground, Stiles' eyes widened when he met Derek's gaze. It was as if the blood had somehow tainted his eyes as well, the irises practically glowing with red. His face was changed, crinkled and furry and fanged, and Stiles felt himself pale as he recoiled slightly. Derek's brow furrowed further at the motion, and the red cleared from his eyes in an instant.

For a long moment, no one moved. Stiles could feel Boyd at his side but it was distant, an echo of real life compared to the intensity of the blue-eyed stare fixed upon him. The sound of Derek's breath, harsh in his throat, filled the room, everyone else's stuck in their lungs, caught in their throats as they waited for what would happen.

"Derek...?" Stiles said softly, one hand raised slightly to calm the beast before him. Derek's eyes may not have been bloodied with rage, but they were still wild.

"Get out," Derek choked out, harsh and rough. It was obvious, how much effort he was making to calm down, to stay human.

"What?" Stiles demanded, gaze shifting sideways to land on Scott, who looked just as bewildered as Stiles felt. "And go where? What happened?"

"_Get out_," Derek demanded again, taking a step toward Stiles, threatening with his entire body.

Stiles scowled, anger flaring. Emergency or not, he didn't deserve a threat for his concern. "You're covered in blood, and I'm not going anywhere until you tell us what's going on!" he snapped, holding his ground. He'd fought supers before, even hand to hand, even when he'd been younger and had known far less about defending himself. Derek may have been an alpha werewolf, but Stiles was a trained, post-apocalypse warrior and he was _not_ backing down from a couple words and some threatening body language.

Unfortunately, Derek wasn't vacant threats and charm, and the next moment found Stiles shoved roughly against the wall with superhuman strength, the werewolf's forearm smashed tight to his throat. Lips pulled back, long canines bared, Derek snarled at him, shoving again for good measure.

"You're going to get out of my house, go back to your base, and help your _people_ salvage the remains of the scouting group we just found smeared across a quarter mile of forest," Derek growled, low in his chest, the words rumbling across Stiles' skin.

Stiles' eyes dropped, skipping over the fangs along Derek's lips, and he swallowed thickly. "Remains?" he asked, voice cracking into a strange whisper.

"As in dead," Derek said flatly, forearm loosening as his hands found Stiles' shirt instead. He may have wanted to sound angry, but he just sounded so _tired_. "As in Peter got to them, and what's left is barely worth burying."

Slowly, in as non-threatening a way as Stiles knew how, he brought his hands up, laid them over Derek's where they were curled in the material of his shirt. "You're kicking us out because Peter killed someone?" He frowned, though, because scout parties were always three. "Because he killed three people?"

The fire returned to Derek's curled lips. "I'm kicking you out because they're going to come looking for us now, and we don't have time to baby a turnwolf," he snapped, pulling Stiles bodily away from the wall and sending him stumbling in the general direction of the door. "We're leaving."

"What!" Stiles cried at the same time as Scott. They exchanged a glance, Stiles shaking his head in denial. "You can't! You _promised_ you would-"

"I didn't promise you _anything_, human," Derek interrupted harshly, advancing on Stiles once more, backing him up toward the exit. Isaac dodged out of the way, trailed to a stop beside Scott. The two shared a confused, worried look that Stiles noted even in the heat of the moment.

"You kick us out now, and Scott's as good as _dead_," Stiles shouted, pushing back at Derek rather than backing down when Derek got too close. The wolf caught his wrists, squeezing painfully, but Stiles didn't give him the satisfaction of crying out. "And I'll be right after him," he bit out instead, bringing up a knee to try to work some distance between himself and Derek, shoving at the wolf's belly.

"Not my problem," Derek told him nastily, shifting so Stiles' leg fell back to the floor with a thump, and shoving the boy away from him by the wrists. Stiles' back thudded hard against the front door. "Get out before-"

"Before what!" Stiles cut him off with a high shout. "Before you kill us? You may as well! You may as well just kill us, Derek! What the hell happened to doing the right thing?!"

Derek hackled, but before he could take any further violent action, Isaac was at his side, gently shouldering him away as Scott ducked in and grabbed Stiles by the back of the neck.

"Go," Isaac said softly to Scott. Stiles tore his gaze from Derek just long enough to see the regret in the young wolf's eyes. "Just go."

"Yeah," Scott agreed, and he sounded miserable but he was ushering Stiles to one side, drawing open the creaky front door and ushering his best friend through it. He turned back to Isaac for just a moment, lips pursed and brows furrowed, ignoring Derek completely. "Sorry. We're sorry."

"Us too," Isaac told him, nodding.

Stiles planted his feet before Scott could get him any further, before they managed to make it off the porch. He put his hands on Scott's shoulders and Scott let him pause, let him lock eyes with Derek. Stiles shook his head and Scott heard the minute tremble in his voice when he spoke.

"We _trusted_ you," Stiles told Derek, quiet but firm. "We still need your help."

"I'm _sorry_, Stiles," Derek stressed, just going slack in Isaac's hold at the broken tone. "I have to put my pack first."

Stiles swallowed, amber-brown gaze raking over the fully-human alpha, and then he nodded, just once. "Fine." His fingers slipped from Scott's shoulders and he turned away from the pack, chest tight. "Let's just go," he said, like a surrender.

The sound of their feet upon the stairs was hollow and cold, but it was nothing compared to the soft, final click of the door behind them.


	5. Chapter Five

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

**Chapter Five**

The air was clear and soft as they trekked through the forest, climbing over fallen trees, not quite hopping the stream which gushed with fresh rainfall. Their gear, or most of it, was back at the werewolf house, a fact which pissed off Stiles far more than it did Scott. Guns were difficult to come by these days, Stiles reasoned aloud, cranky and sharp. The one he carried he had brought with him to the camp all the way from his hometown, from his father's station.

"We can go back for it," Scott suggested tiredly, brushing rain-weighted leaves away from his face.

"We're not _going back_," Stiles hissed, tart and clipped. "I'm just saying they shouldn't have made us leave like that! They agreed to teach you! They were just- we had an agreement. I thought-"

When Stiles cut himself off, Scott slowed, watched as Stiles tromped through the forest as if it had personally offended him. After a moment Stiles realized Scott was no longer following him, and he turned to see what the hold up was, only to find Scott staring at him, head tipped slightly. His lips were pursed and he was wearing the face that said Stiles had done something he was about to regret. He groaned, but managed not to take the bait by asking what it was until Scott began to walk again.

"Nothing," Scott told him, moving past him. Stiles grabbed his sleeve at the elbow and gave him a pointed look, to which Scott rolled his eyes not a little dramatically. "It just seems like, you know, maybe you _wanted _to stay there." He shrugged. "That's all."

"Well I didn't," Stiles replied hotly, and Scott's brow furrowed a little. "What?"

"Weird..."

"What's weird, Scott?" Stiles asked impatiently. He didn't think there was anything weird about not wanting to have sleepovers with a pack full of deadly werewolves.

Scott considered whatever it was for a moment, his head cocked with one side closer to Stiles. "I can hear your heartbeat," he said softly. "Since this morning, I could. Except..." He met Stiles' eyes, confused. "You don't have a heart condition, do you?"

"No," Stiles said, suddenly a little nervous because it had been six years since the apocalypse had hit, which meant it had been six years since anyone actually certified to do so had given him a physical. Six years since doctors had stopped keeping an eye on him after what happened to his mother.

"Hunh," Scott said, shrugging a little. "It just- it sounded like your heart stuttered? Not a lot!" he rushed to assure Stiles when his friend gave him a wide-eyed look. "Just sped up a little."

Before Stiles could make any sort of retort, he saw a shiver of movement through the trees and signaled silently to Scott to shut up and get down. Together they dropped to the padded forest floor and fell still, Scott turning before he settled. It was on both their minds, the loose-cannon former alpha prowling this neck of the woods. If Derek had been truthful, then Peter had taken out an entire, armed, three-man scouting party and two unarmed humans weren't about to be a match for him.

Dark hair bobbed into view, and Stiles relaxed when he saw the bright-orange bandana tied up around her hair. He didn't move as he shouted, not wanting to draw fire. "Kiele!"

The figure froze, then rotated around to his direction. There was a beat of silence during which Stiles considered shouting again, but she beat him to it. "Stiles?"

"Yeah, stand down!" he shouted back, and Scott rolled his eyes like Stiles was stupid for thinking she'd do anything else. "Scott's here too!"

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed, now hurtling through the underbrush toward him. He rose as she reached them and she flung herself at him without any attempt to slow her momentum. Catching her, Stiles huffed at the impact, but he returned the hug. "We thought you were dead!"

"We thought we were dead, too," Scott told her, accepting a hug as well. He dropped his gaze, refusing to meet her gaze. "Kiele..." He sighed, a breathy noise through his nose. "I- I'm sorry." He looked up, guilt scrawled in every line of his face. Stiles had the good sense to copy the face, though he wasn't sure what for. "We got attacked by that alpha werewolf, and Jackson and... and Danny..."

Kiele's burst of sunny laughter startled both boys, and she smacked Scott in the chest. "They're at camp," she told him with good-humored exasperation. "They said the same thing about you."

"They're _alive_?" Stiles exclaimed, doing a damn fine job of sounding surprised even though he knew better. He let out a long sigh of relief.

She tipped her head slightly and motioned to encompass both of them. "How'd you two dingbats survive?"

Both boys immediately looked nervous, trading a glance. Stiles took lead. "Uh, we never actually came up against the thing," he told her. Scott was watching him intently, a slightly puzzled expression on his face. "I mean, we did, obviously, but when we split up he- it chased Jackson and your brother off. We tried to follow them, but we lost them through Stony Creek."

Unimpressed did not begin to describe her expression, and the suspicion edging her eyes made Stiles nervous. "So, what, you been wandering the woods for two days instead of coming back?" she asked, brow rising. "And where's your gear?"

Stiles glanced to Scott like a deer in high beams, but Kiele was staring at _him_, not Scott, and so he shrugged meekly. "The alpha's been between us and home since then. He- it disappeared this morning." Scott was giving him that _look _again, and he shifted uncomfortably without taking his eyes off of Kiele, hoping she didn't ask about their gear again.

Kiele dropped her gaze. "Yeah, it moved 'round north east, got Jamie's group, except it left Raul alive. Sent him back with a bite wound and a message."

Stiles didn't need superhuman hearing to catch the click of Scott's throat as he swallowed. "A message?" Scott asked neutrally. Stiles knew he didn't want to talk about bites. He didn't want to ask whose bullet it had been, or where Raul got buried. Neither of them did.

"Yeah," she said, nodding. "It wants Gerard to give up Kate. Something about how Gerard killed its family." She rolled her eyes in a way that drew her whole body into the motion, a look of disgust rolling over her features. "As if a Super has _family_, right?"

Though she laughed, a cold lump settled in both boys' bellies. "Yeah," Stiles agreed weakly, forcing a chuckle.

She shot him a look that said he was weird, but then touched her fingers to the walkie talkie on her shoulder. "Lorenzo, you're not gonna believe this one. I found McCall and Stilinski."

There was a crackle and then Lorenzo's nasal voice filtered over the equipment. "In one piece?"

Laughing, she pressed the button. "Yeah, one piece, jackass. You and Warren head in, I'm taking them back."

"Yes ma'am," came the immediate response.

She fixed the two of them with a look, and then motioned in the direction of home with a tick of her head. "Shall we?" However, she didn't wait for a response, just began moving toward the camp without so much as a backward glance to make sure they were following.

Scott snagged Stiles' sleeve before he could follow too closely, letting Kiele get a good lead on them without getting out of sight. Then he released his friend, and Stiles gave him a curious look as he shook out his sleeve. "What?"

"It's when you lie," Scott said softly. At Stiles' puzzled look, he added: "Your heartbeat upticks when you lie."

For a split second their eyes met, and then Scott turned away as well, trudging after Danny's little sister. Stiles swallowed thickly before trailing after him.

* * *

Stiles wasn't sure what he was expecting when they returned to the camp, but being assaulted by Allison was not it. She closed the distance from the gate to Scott like another apocalypse might start if she didn't, and the moment she was in range she pulled him into a fierce hug. In the embrace, Scott turned to mush, hugging her back and burying his nose in the crook of her neck. A certain amount of desperate happiness for them beset Stiles as he watched, the corner of his mouth ticked up in a smile.

Then he was ensconced in a hug of his own as Allison turned her attention to him as well, and the choked laugh he let out was caught somewhere between relief and fear. It was a somewhat awkward hug, with her swollen belly in the way, and Stiles couldn't figure out how Scott had made it seem so effortless.

"I thought we'd lost you!" she gasped, returning her grasp to Scott. "If you ever stay away that fucking long again, I really am going to come hunt your asses down and butcher you myself, are we clear?"

"Crystal," both boys mumbled, looking for all the world like scolded five year olds, and Allison was already pulling Scott into another hug.

"Geezus, when Jackson and Danny showed up alone- I almost left right then," she told them, and if either of them had ever regretted anything it was the pain in her voice. "I'm so glad you're okay."

"Actually, ma'am," began a voice off to their right. One of the camp intake volunteers had approached them, skirting around Kiele to get closer. "We don't _know _that they're okay, and they-"

"They _what_?" Allison interrupted, in the tone of voice that said they had better not fucking _anything_. "You think I can't judge when my own husband and his best friend are fine?"

There was no right answer for the volunteer, and he stood there for a moment just opening and closing his mouth, as if he could gasp in a retort that would save him from Allison's wrath. He couldn't, and his stuttered "B-But, ma'am, everyone-" was cut short.

"These two are not _everyone_," she snapped. "I've had two full days of thinking these two were stone dead and I'm not letting them off that easy. I can give them the physical myself. Full body," she said significantly, and the volunteer blushed.

"Oh," he breathed in a rush. "Oh, okay."

Stiles rolled his eyes, and gave the volunteer an apologetic smile. As if the camp didn't already assume he was having a romping good time with Scott and Allison both, he was sure rumors were now going to be rampant for weeks if they managed to survive this. As it was, he was just beyond thrilled that Allison was being clingy and insistent. There was no way the volunteer they were leaving behind would take the issue to Gerard, not when the issue involved suggesting to Gerard that his precious granddaughter was somehow not capable of something.

* * *

"She really saved you," Morrell said softly, and Stiles looked up to meet her eyes. He'd nearly forgotten she was there, absorbed in the story and blanketed by the quiet clicking of the recording device.

Stiles nodded slowly, eyes unfocused. "She had a lot of pull."

"Because of Gerard," Morrell concluded. Stiles nodded again. "So she said that the two of you were okay, and everyone else accepted that?"

"What were they going to do?" Stiles scoffed, meeting her eyes. "Go interrupt Gerard to tell him his granddaughter broke protocol? Have you met the man?"

"I haven't," she said, and when his eyes narrowed at her tone, she forced a smile. "So she unwittingly covered for you and-"

"It wasn't unwitting," Stiles interrupted.

"Hm?" Morrell straightened up a little. Realization dawned in her eyes the same moment. "Stiles... are you telling me that Allison Argent _knew_? Before you returned?"

Stiles considered her for a moment, wondering what difference it made. Allison knew, of course she knew, but no one else could have known that she knew or else she'd have been keeping Stiles company in the basement of the hospital.

"Yes," he said finally, cautious. "She can be... _convincing _when she wants to know something. Jackson caved, and told her. About the alpha, about the bite, about us leaving to find the wolves. He told us he thought it would buy time, but it could have gotten us killed just as easily."

"She could have turned you in," Morrell said. "She _should _have turned you in, to protect the camp."

Again, Stiles nodded a confirmation. His eyes roamed to the side but didn't leave the table. "Allison... S-she likes to take care of her own problems," he mumbled. "If anyone was going to kill Scott, it was going to be her. If he was a wolf, if he had to be put down, it was going to beher bullet."

It was Morrell's turn to nod thoughtfully. The smile she turned to Stiles this time looked far more genuine, the sadness touching her eyes. "It sounds as if she loved him very much."

A tiny huff of laughter scratched at Stiles' throat. "That's an understatement. She'd have done anything for him. Hell, she did do anything for him. She was eight months pregnant and instead of resting, she spent those two days prowling the camp entrances waiting for us to turn up so she could save our asses. Scott was livid anyone let her, but I guess you don't really _let _Allison Argent do anything, you know?" His gaze flicked to Morrell and then away. "I suppose you don't know."

"No," she said softly. "I don't. I also don't... How did you end up with the werewolves again?" she asked, and there was that word again, falling from her lips like nothing special. Stiles scrunched up his face and sighed.

"It's weird, right?" he murmured. "That should have been the end of it. Derek kicked us out and Jackson saved us by telling Allison and we should have gotten away with it all. Derek was supposed to find Peter and take the pack away, and our unit would just deal with whatever happened to Scott. That would have been the end of the story."

_Except _hunt heavy in the air between them, and Morrell let it for a while. Stiles edged his fingers around the corners of the small photograph in his hand, feeling the slide of the silky photo parchment. It was backward, Lydia's visage pointed away from him because there was too much waiting in the pit of his mind if he kept looking at her. Finally he set it face down on the table, because Morrell was looking at him like she'd asked a question and he knew the answer she wanted.

"Except that wasn't the end of it, you know?" Stiles blurted out, the words just torn from him in a rush. "It was barely the beginning, and we just... we weren't ready."

* * *

Scott's changes were both slower and faster than Stiles expected. Though Stiles had hoped the camp had only imprisoned Raul to see if the bite took, it didn't take much digging to find out otherwise. Stiles had ended up on the outskirts of the camp at the field they used for a graveyard, looking at the crudely carved wooden cross and cursing camp regulations. He hadn't known Raul well, but just having someone else going through the same obstacle course would have made this all easier. It would have let him reference everything happening to Scott to something else, maybe let him establish a baseline.

As it was, they took the hits as they came, and grappled with Scott's problems as best as they could without a map. They had more free time to cope than they would have normally had, after Scott's mother recommended that their hunting team be taken off the roster for the first week after they returned. For mental health reasons, Melissa had told Gerard with a stern scowl that said she would brook no argument. Combined with Allison's insistence that she needed both Scott and Stiles nearby, Gerard had not seen it to be worth the fight. A greenhorn hunting team took their slice of hunting grounds, and everyone on the team except for Matt - who was still sick - piled into Allison's quarters to strategize together.

The increase in Scott's hearing was both a blessing and a curse, as they found out. He could hear the heartbeats of everyone in a thirty yard radius, but that meant that he could hear the heartbeats of everyone in a thirty yard radius- along with everything louder. Cranky did not begin to describe his mood, and there was nothing to be done about the headache all the noise induced in that first week back. They tried various herbs from the stores, ones that were supposed to help, but nothing worked.

After his sense of hearing, it was his sense of smell that leapt to werewolf acuity. He confided to Stiles that everyone around camp smelled awful most of the time, with the limited showering ability and complete lack of deodorant six years post-apocalypse. There wasn't anything either of them could do about it, though, so Scott settled for pulling small faces at Stiles whenever someone smelled particularly ripe, turning it into an inside joke instead. Just about the only person Scott enjoyed being around was Allison, and Stiles only asked why once. He regretted the answer.

It got miserable, the closer they got to the full moon. Scott was stressed and irritated from his headaches, and the little things that might not have normally set him off before put him on edge now. The fear that they were going to get caught had settled like a cold, dead weight in his belly. Stiles did his best to shoulder Scott away from harmful situations before they got nasty, before they got caught, but they were not even a full week in the first time Scott's eyes flashed yellow and claws peeked out from his fingertips.

It was stupid, the first time it happened. They'd been sitting in the high school cafeteria, where nearly the entire camp took meals throughout the day. Jackson was tossing empty .22 shells at Danny across the table and saying 'bang' with a shit-eating grin that got bigger with every casing, and Allison was beside him doing her best impression of a person not ready to strangle him. Matt was fiddling with a Polaroid camera Danny's sister's group had brought back from their scouting mission the day prior, trying to figure out why the shutter wasn't closing properly.

It was so _normal_.

Then the hunter squad from two zones south west of them had swung into the cafeteria, more boisterous than strictly necessary, and Stiles was not the only one who caught the way Scott stiffened. Allison laid a hand on his shoulder, but he had an iron grip on his lunch tray.

"Scott," Stiles said, low and urgent, trying to draw his attention back to the group. Jackson had stopped tossing shells and everyone was staring at their leader with slightly wide eyes. "Hey, buddy."

"What's wrong?" Matt asked, looking amongst all of them. They hadn't told him yet why they were spending so much time together.

Danny pursed his lips and sighed, then grabbed Matt's hand. "C'mon. We need to talk."

A cackle from one of the girls from the other squad scattered around the quiet lunchroom, and Scott's eyes flashed a bright golden-orange. Stiles cursed and their group looked around like meercats, making sure no one was watching. If it hadn't been so dire, it would have been hilarious, and Stiles remembered to make fun of it later that night. As it was, they all needed Scott to calm down immediately, and none of them knew how to make that happen.

"They saw Peter," Scott growled.

Stiles blinked. "Like, the werewolf?" Stiles asked.

"No, like the Pan," Scott snapped, nails nicking into the wood of the table. Allison laid her hand over his and he drew them out with a shuddering breath. "They said they shot him. They're going back tomorrow to see if they can pick up a blood trail. They're angry about Raul."

The group looked nervously amongst themselves and a loudly squawked 'he _what_?!' from two tables over where Danny had taken Matt broke the silence. "We should maybe get out of here," Stiles said, scrambling to his feet. He immediately began to pry the lunch tray from Scott's fingers. "Let's get you back to the room, and Allison can sort out their group later."

"You don't have to protect them," Jackson pointed out, sweeping up the shells with his hand. He'd be filling them later. "They bit Scott. They kicked you out. The one they shot killed those scouts. Maybe-"

"If you say maybe he deserves it, so help me, Jackson," Allison interrupted.

Stiles knew that she probably thought Peter _did _deserve it, and if Stiles was being honest, it was probably even true. Peter had killed humans. If it had been any other Super, or even just a couple weeks ago, Stiles might have agreed. Now, he wanted to know who drew first blood. Now he was worried that if they blamed the deaths on Peter being a _werewolf _over him being a _bad person_, that Scott would internalize it.

Stiles wasn't sure which was more foolish of them; that they believed he wouldn't become a monster or that they worried he would become one if they talked about it.

They had managed, that first day, to get Scott out of the lunchroom unseen. Danny had joined them at Scott and Allison's apartment later that evening, Matt in tow. They had played twenty questions of which fifteen of them didn't have answers, but Matt had accepted Scott's new lot in life without much actual fuss. Stiles wasn't sure what they would have done if he'd decided to rat them out to upper management. That was a situation that he wasn't sure even Allison could have gotten them out of, if it came down to it.

The shift in eyes and claws and - eventually - teeth became more frequent as the days passed. It was better around Allison, at least, especially with how close she was to her due date. It was like a drug, every time the surprise crossed her expression and she reached for his hand as she felt the baby kicking. No matter what else was going on, he relaxed into her touch, temper evening out into calm once more. He smiled and laid his hand beside hers on her stomach.

"I can hear his heart flutter," Scott murmured, smile twitching at his lips as he met Allison's gaze. She returned it, practically glowing.

"You think it's a he?" Jackson asked, his feet propped up on the edge of the bed as he leaned back in the metal folding chair. "Can you smell it or something?" Lydia hit his shoulder for the tactless question. They'd had to let her in on the secret so that she'd been able to leave out a lot in their debriefing records.

"No," Scott told him patiently, giving him a look. "I dunno, I just think it is."

Allison's smile was nothing short of utterly mischievous. "I think it's a girl," she stated, light and high and teasing. None of them had any clue, of course, and though he didn't say anything, Stiles was with Allison on this one. Definitely a baby girl.

"They used to say that moms had a way of just knowing," Danny commented off-hand, fiddling with the pieces of his handgun. He was cleaning it on the desk, preparing for their return to duty.

Stiles didn't want to remember they were going back out in the field. As much as Scott had suffered through this week, Stiles had enjoyed it. There had been so many hours sitting in Allison's room, surrounded by his friends without pressure to be hunting something, without looking over their shoulders for werewolves or vampires or any of the other supernatural creatures plaguing the world so openly now.

It was just so _peaceful_, watching Danny and Jackson banter back and forth, watching Scott moon over Allison and Allison smile softly at the life beneath her skin, and Stiles thought it felt like home used to. It felt like they didn't have to be related to be family, an idea which had recently begun to send him into a tailspin of panic every time he had it.

They were a _family_, his little hunting squad.

They were a _pack_, and it made him wonder if maybe they'd been wrong.

What if maybe they'd all been wrong this whole time and this was what it was like for werewolf packs? It made him wonder if this, this sense of family and belonging and content, was what they had been destroying every time they put holes in the pelt of a wolf. This was what Stiles had seen when he watched Derek's pack, and it turned his stomach sick and twisty to think that he'd once been ready to rip that apart without even asking _what if_.

That night he didn't stay in Scott and Allison's quarters, but he didn't go back to his own, either. He crossed the camp, nodding to the few sleepy denizens that were still wandering the streets, until he reached a squat, three-story apartment building made from grey brick and horrible single-pane windows. The door was unlocked and he let himself into the hall, climbed the stairs to the third story, and knocked on his father's door in a pattern he had used since he was six years old and had a secret tree fort in the backyard.

When his dad pulled open the door, his smile was already in place. "C'mon in," he greeted, stepping aside so Stiles could get past the door. "Thought you'd be hanging out with your team again."

Stiles forced a half-hearted smile. "Uh, Scott and Allison were being disgustingly cute," he replied, and it was even mostly true.

As the door clicked shut, his father chuckled. "I can't wait to see him with that kid," he said, ushering Stiles further into the little apartment. "He's going to make a great father."

"Yeah," Stiles agreed weakly, swallowing down the lump of dread and avoiding his father's gaze.

His father's brow creased, and he halted, fixing Stiles with a no-nonsense look crafted from two decades of law enforcement service as he crossed his arms. Stiles was tired, sometimes, but he was not quiet, never nervy and hesitant like he was now. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong!" Stiles blurted, too quickly. A flush colored his jawline and he rolled his eyes because even he could see how unconvincing _that _was. "Nothing, it's just- I dunno."

"You don't know, or you don't want to say?" his father asked, one skeptical brow rising.

"I _can't _say," Stiles admitted on a breath, like it hurt. He tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and was grateful when his dad just let him. Finally he shook his head and met his dad's gaze. "I've just been thinking a lot lately. Do you remember when I was a little kid, and you told me sometimes rules were stupid? You said that sometimes they were supposed to protect people, but sometimes they hurt people instead." He swallowed. This was why he was here. "Do you still think that? After... everything."

His father gave him a measured look, slight frown creasing the edges of his lips, before he uncrossed his arms. "Yeah, kiddo. Sometimes."

Stiles took a deep breath. "Then, can I ask you a weird question?" His heartbeat picked up just thinking of broaching the subject of Scott's transformation, of Derek's pack, of his group's silence on a matter that should have been addressed decisively a week ago.

"Do you ask any other kind?" his father teased gently. Stiles just frowned, and his dad rolled his eyes in the exact same way as Stiles always did. "Go ahead."

It was stupid, but Stiles hesitated, even then. He could change the question still. He could keep his mouth shut, keep his father out of it, not put any of them in a position where they could get into trouble. Instead he let out a slow breath and steeled himself to make decisions he wasn't sure he wouldn't regret. "I just- Do you ever wonder what if we're wrong?"

"I wonder that all the time," his father told him. "Is there anything in particular you think we're wrong about today?"

Sighing, Stiles leaned against the short wall that cordoned off the front door from the rest of the room. "I've been thinking lately that... we've spent the past few years just shooting anything that gets close to camp, but what if something good comes? How many good things have we killed? What if they could have helped us? What if they needed our help?"

At this his father nodded slowly, taking in the information as he was wont to do. Stiles let him muse in silence, knew the way his father filed information into order, testing various pathways of thought before deciding anything. He wished he had the patience. "We spent two years on the road by ourselves," his father finally reminded him. "You were old enough to remember. Did we run across anything friendly?"

"No," Stiles admitted, shoulders dropping. "But we never asked either. We fought or we ran, but we never asked."

"And you're thinking maybe we should have?" his father asked. It wasn't a dig, not when he said it like that; he was trying to get to the root of Stiles' question, to give Stiles the best answer he could get, an answer he would be able to believe.

"I think it's worth a shot, don't you?" Stiles responded. "This... this _war _Gerard started... it's not going to last forever. Eventually humanity's going to get its feet under it and we'll have to decide if we're going to share the planet or not."

"Are you hoping we do?" It was weird, how accepting his father's tone was. Stiles wondered how many times his father had the same thoughts, how badly it bothered him. He wanted to protect people; his whole adult life had been about protecting people. The question Stiles couldn't help but wonder was what constituted _people _to his father.

"I guess I just- shouldn't we at least see if it's possible?" he asked, almost helplessly. "Is ignorance going to be enough of an excuse for just wiping out everything in our path?"

His father shrugged, giving him a quirked lip. "It's a good question," he admitted. "I'm sorry I don't have an answer for you, kiddo. Maybe your group can ask the next friendly Super you find."

It was a joke, and Stiles knew it was a joke by the upturn in his father's tone, in the light that brightened his father's eyes, but it didn't _feel_ like a joke. It felt like a chill coursing through his blood, like the sudden realization that there was a group of friendly Supers just outside of camp. Stiles had spent two days nestled in a werewolf den, and he came out _completely unscathed_. At the last, when the pack was in danger from Stiles' own people, even then Derek had only kicked them out.

It would have been easier, _safer_, to kill Scott and Stiles to increase their head start. Despite Scott's current condition, they were still mostly human and certainly still loyal to the human camp that would shortly be hunting the pack. Of course they would tell the camp where the wolves were. Of course they would rat out the group that turned them out in the cold. _Of course_.

Except that they hadn't. They could have, with Allison covering for them. It would have been as easy as we escaped, and they could have sent a squad to exterminate the werewolves the same day, before they could bolt. It might even have saved them a few of the side-eyes they had gotten since returning, if they'd had some sort of information instead of the lame, vague _we just played keep-away_ story they'd told a dozen times now.

Yet through whatever unspoken agreement they'd made, Scott and Stiles hadn't breathed a word about what really happened. Danny and Jackson and Allison never mentioned it to them, didn't call them out on not turning in the pack. They didn't ask why they weren't, didn't suggest that they do so. Stiles had thought maybe they just didn't want to remember it, just wanted to cling to the normal lives they used to have for as long as possible but...

Maybe they were asking themselves the same questions Stiles was. Maybe they were wondering why a group of werewolves - bloodthirsty, savage, heartless Supers - had taken Scott and Stiles into their group in the first place. Maybe they were wondering why they let Scott and Stiles leave alive. Maybe they were all wondering _what if_ together, and the thought both chilled and excited Stiles.

"Yeah," he managed, forcing a breathy chuckle. "I'll get right on that."

* * *

"You didn't go back," Morrell interrupted. "The records say your party didn't leave for another two days, and you came back right on schedule."

Stiles hummed, tipping his head slightly, his eyes unfocused. "Yes." And then: "We didn't see them. We didn't go to the house, and we didn't see them. But they didn't- they stayed."

Morrell contained her sigh, because Stiles was losing his focus again, getting harder to understand. His attention was slipping around, and his sentences were fragmenting. It was so difficult to keep him on-subject for long stretches of time, but he had seemed so lucid after seeing the photograph. She'd hoped for a little longer than this.

"Stiles," she said softly. "The camp record says you and Jackson disappeared two weeks after you and Scott returned. Do you remember that? Do you remember going out in the woods with Jackson?"

A weird little shudder went through him, head to toe, and he squinted his eyes shut tight. "It was for Lydia, he was always for Lydia," Stiles murmured, half to himself, pulling his hands off the table to put them in his lap. He hunched over them like he was expecting a blow. "How could they take him from her? They didn't see her face! He was so-"

"Stiles," Morrell commanded sharply. His attention snapped to her, cloudy but severe. She gentled her tone, held his gaze. "You went into the woods with Jackson," she reminded him, and she saw a glimmer of recognition. "You were gone all day, Stiles, and you came back alone. What happened?"

For a long moment he simply stared at her, jaw slacked open a tiny bit, tongue resting against his teeth. It was silent, dead silent, but it wasn't the closed-off silence he got when he was lost. She could tell from the tick of his eyes back and forth that he was thinking, though she could only hope that he was thinking about an answer for the question. When he gave a little shake of his head, his eyes cleared, locking on hers.

"Scott cut himself," Stiles said, like an epiphany, and Morrell let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Before she could try to redirect him again, he continued. "He cut himself, and Jackson saw it, and that's why we had to go to the woods."

* * *

The cafeteria was buzzing when their group returned from their first sweep back in the field. It was a clean sweep, nothing to report to Lydia's team when they arrived back at base. Stiles had taken lead, leaving Scott behind to stay with Allison, and if he had taken the group a little beyond the borders of the Beacon Hills Camp territory looking for signs that the wolves had safely moved on, no one mentioned it or complained. They didn't find anything, which Stiles supposed was just as well, as he couldn't decide which he would have preferred; to find they had moved on or to find that they hadn't.

As it was, they debriefed and then Jackson stole Lydia away from the rest of the Nerd Herd records crew to come have dinner with them. Scott and Allison were already reserving their favorite table, quite a feat considering that they were arriving at the peak of the evening dining hours. Everyone slid into chairs and the customary exchanging of food began as everyone traded the things they didn't like away for better prospects.

When the dust had settled, Scott cleared his throat and asked what they had found. Everyone looked to Stiles, who set down his fork and let out a sigh. "A whole lot of nothing," he responded, exasperated with the whole situation. When Scott gave him a frown, he rolled his eyes. "We didn't even get close, Scott. You know the edge of the camp is still a couple miles out from that house."

"Yeah," Scott conceded, poking around at the flat, tough bread chunk on his tray. "I mean it's not like they'd help anyway."

"You're doing fine on your own," Danny assured him. "You're almost week away from the full moon, and no one's even noticed."

"They will," Scott mumbled, looking guilty. "It's getting harder to control." He picked up his knife and began hacking methodically at the bread, slicing it into bite-sized chunks to put into his stew bowl. "In a week, I don't think I'll be able to hide it."

"Maybe we can sneak you out for a day or two," Lydia suggested lightly. "There's been talk about sending a team east, scoping out a new town to foster now that we're on our feet."

Scott paused, looking up to her. "That... that might actually work," he admitted.

"No way you'd get authorization before the moon," Jackson told him. "Maybe next moon, but not this one. Not without setting off all the little paranoia bells in Gerard's head."

"True," Lydia conceded. She shrugged and Scott returned to his task with the bread. "Well, we'll just have to find a way to hide you. It's only one week. I'm sure we can keep you from murdering anyone until it's over."

Scott's hands fumbled at the casual insinuation, his blade sinking into the pad of his thumb. He cursed, dropping the knife with a clatter and clapping his palm over the injury to stop the bleeding. Lydia looked chagrined, murmuring an apology as Allison passed over one of the cloth scraps they used for napkins. Gingerly, Scott peeled his hand away long enough to pick up the cloth, and then froze, eyes on his thumb.

The injury was gone.

There was a smear of blood where it had happened, but there was no sign of the ragged wound. He looked up, caught Stiles staring as well. Swallowing, he wiped away the blood and rested his hands against the table top, a little shocked.

"Dude," Jackson breathed. He hadn't seen the healing power in action yet; none of them had, not even Stiles, though he had at least born witness to before and after the bite at the house.

"I know," Scott mumbled. "Ridiculous, right?"

"Useful," Matt commented, staring as well. His eyes flicked up to Scott's face. "Could you, like, regrow a limb?"

"I'm not really gonna... find out," Scott told him, giving him a strange look.

"Probably," Stiles supplied helpfully. When everyone looked at him, he shrugged. "Well have you ever seen a werewolf with a chopped off arm or something?" The group mumbled agreements that they had not, in fact, and Stiles nodded.

They returned to their dinners, but Stiles didn't miss how quiet Jackson had gotten, or the way he stared thoughtfully at Scott for the rest of the hour. Stiles knew that look, and it was never anything good, so when the rest of the group rose to deposit their dirty trays and head home for the evening, Stiles nabbed Jackson's sleeve and told the rest of the group that they'd catch up. Lydia frowned, but Allison had her by the forearm and there was no way Lydia was going to resist her.

As soon as they were alone, Jackson shrugged off Stiles' grasp and glowered at him. "What?"

"You okay?" Stiles asked, worried that perhaps Jackson was having second thoughts about keeping Scott's secret. He had told Allison without permission, and Lydia as well, they had come to find out.

Jackson scowled. "I'm fine."

"Yeah? Cause you spent all of dinner staring at Scott like you couldn't decide what cut to make first," Stiles told him, so matter-of-fact there was no room to dispute it.

Rolling his eyes, Jackson turned away just a little, not enough to put his back to Stiles. Then he hesitated, and Stiles could practically _hear_ his internal argument. With a breathy sigh, Jackson turned back around to face him, though he couldn't bring himself to look at Stiles. "I've just been thinking a lot about all this werewolf crap," he admitted. "How it's been two weeks and no one's noticed."

"Yeah, and we're really freaking lucky," Stiles pointed out, brows furrowing. "If Allison hadn't covered our asses when we got back, Scott would be dead. He'd have gotten the silver bullet treatment the moment they figured it out."

"Okay, but they _haven't_," Jackson told him. "And they're probably not going to."

Stiles scoffed, not believing Jackson's complete lack of perspective. "We're not out of the fire yet; if we make it through this week, it'll only be because Peter's out causing so much trouble no one's going to look closely at Scott. I never thought I'd be _happy _about people _dying_, but I pretty much have to be because I know it's saving my ass too. And probably yours and Danny's."

Jackson closed his eyes, shoulders hunching a little under the weight of that truth. "I know. You're right."

Though he hesitated, Stiles reached out and touched Jackson's shoulder, drew his attention up. "I gotta know, man. You're not gonna tell anyone, are you?"

"No!" Jackson said vehemently. "No. I just- Whatever. No, I'm not going to tell anyone. Are we done?"

Stiles nodded toward the exit, and Jackson gave a little exasperated shake of his head before leaving. For a moment Stiles watched him go, tracked him as he pushed through the double doors with a little more force than necessary, and disappeared from sight. Only then did he let himself relax.

He trusted that Jackson was going to keep his mouth shut, but he still didn't like the look in Jackson's eyes. Something was going on with Jackson, and Stiles needed to know what it was before it got their whole group into trouble. He had a feeling he wasn't going to like it.

* * *

_ We still have not managed to catch my uncle. We should have moved on a week ago, when my wounds healed, and left him to his own devices, let his revenge be the end of him. I can't bring myself to do it. Laura tells me it's not a sign of weakness, but of strength, that I will not leave family behind._

_ Laura is full of bullshit._

_ Even if I could bring myself to leave, however, Boyd flat out refuses. He's been building something in the woods, and I'm pretty sure it has wheels. He insists we can't leave the curing meat anyway._

_ Boyd is also full of bullshit._

_ The entire pack has lost its mind, honestly. Erica won't stop looking at me and Isaac has been giving me the cold shoulder since I sent away the humans from BHC. He disappears at night and he smells like the woods near the camp when he returns. I think he's hoping for confirmation that they made it back alive and are safe._

_ I don't know if I hope he finds it._

_ I don't know how I'll feel if he doesn't._

_ The scent is almost gone. He was only here two days._

* * *

Notes: Sorry for the delay, and for this not being beta read. If you spotted mistakes feel free to let me know!


	6. Chapter Six

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

**Chapter Six**

* * *

If it had been Harris in the room, he would have already gotten fed up with the way Stiles had trailed off, staring hard at his clasped hands. He would have told Stiles to quit picking at his thumbnail, would probably have called in someone to remove him when Stiles drew blood worrying at his nail. Stiles would already be back in his room, pressed into one of the corners, promising himself over and over and over that he was never going to tell anyone here anything about his pack.

But it wasn't Harris.

The recorder lay dead and silent between them, and Morrell just _sat there_. He knew that she was waiting on him, that he hadn't given whatever subtle indication she'd learned that told her he was done. Whatever she wanted from him, she wanted it badly, wanted it enough to sit there for as long as she needed. It was almost funny, in a tragic sort of way, he found himself thinking. She literally had nothing better to do; the end of the world had laid waste to the idea of deadlines and petty jobs. She wasn't as cog in the workings of this camp, so no one would expect her to do anything other than sit here and wait for Stiles.

For his part, he didn't want to tell her anything. Gerard had made sure that his entire future had been taken from him, and this woman wanted his past, and Stiles didn't know what would be left if he gave it to her. He was terrified the answer would be nothing.

He'd very nearly told her to shove off a handful of times in the past few minutes, but every time he thought he could do it, his eyes flicked to the little square picture that sat face down between them. Lydia was here somewhere, alive, and if he just gave up they could both get out. If he gave up the past he had clung so fiercely to for so long, then Lydia would be left. They would be there for one another, after everything else had passed.

"Can I-" he stared, then clamped his mouth shut. She tipped her head, but she didn't interrupt, didn't try to nudge him in the right direction. She just waited, and it was maddening. "Can I tell you something, off the record?"

Her nod indicated the recorder, which was still dormant on the table.

"I don't want Lydia to be _harmed_ by anything I say," Stiles told her, firm and serious.

"No one is interested in harming Lydia," Morrell assured him, meeting his eyes.

"She's... _special_," Stiles clarified. "I mean, we never met anyone else who was immune."

"Immune?" Morrell asked, sitting up a little straighter. Something warm and triumphant coiled in Stiles at the idea that there was something she didn't know already. He wondered if the camp remembered; they'd certainly known at one point. They'd known before Stiles left.

"To the supernatural," he explained softly. "_All_ the supernatural. When the end hit, she took off running just like everyone else, and she ran right into a pack of werewolves. They left her for dead after they bit her, because the bite festered instead of healing. They thought she was going to die. She thought she was going to die."

Morrell's brow knit. "She's not a werewolf."

"No," Stiles agreed. "The bite turns or it kills, but it didn't do either to her. For whatever reason, her body was able to fight off the infection completely. Her body fights off everything; infection, virus, poison, venom- everything. She and Jackson tested a lot of supernatural afflictions on her before they got here, and nothing affected her at all."

From her expression, Stiles could tell that the camp hadn't told her a bit of any of that. It wasn't surprising. She'd come here already wanting to take them away, and Stiles was fairly certain that the camp's reluctance to send them off again had little to do with Stiles and a lot to do with Lydia.

"If that sort of immunity could be replicated..." she breathed.

"It can't," Stiles told her firmly, perhaps a little too hot. He pursed his lips and forced himself to relax a little before continuing. "I mean, she was safe, which was cool, she'd always be human... but it wasn't a good thing. It was still a curse."

There was that head tilt again, and Stiles began to wonder if perhaps she really was a werewolf in disguise. It made him ache for his pack. "It protected her. That has to be a good thing."

"Sure, and it was, when it was supernatural stuff going wrong," Stiles agreed. "But it wasn't just the supernatural that Lydia was immune to. Her body fought off _everything_, every intrusion."

"I don't...?" Morrell questioned.

Stiles roughed an annoyed noise in the back of his throat and rolled his eyes to the side. "Her body fought off even human changes... like even pregnancies. Her body just- it attacked any foreign matter."

"Oh," Morrell said, small and quiet and guilty. "Oh, Stiles..."

He just shrugged. "It wasn't my problem, not really," Stiles told her, feeling drained after the admission. "It was Jackson's problem, and maybe no one else made the connection, but you can bet he did."

"Connection?" Morrell asked, lost again. Stiles saw the moment realization dawned in her eyes, though, as she connected the same dots Jackson had the day he saw Scott's injury heal in a matter of seconds. "He thought a werewolf embryo could heal itself?"

The nod Stiles gave spoke volumes of regret. "Yeah," he confirmed under his breath. "It was a really huge leap to make, but he, you know, he became _obsessed_ with it right then. We had a week 'til the full moon, and he wouldn't leave me alone about it. 'Take me there,' he'd tell me every time he saw me. 'I need to ask them.' And it was a terrible idea, you know? But he was just so _desperate_, and we'd all seen the way Lydia looked at the kids around camp. So, I kind of had to."

"Had to?" Morrell echoed.

Stiles looked up, and then reached out to press the record button. "Take him to the wolves."

* * *

The forest was clingy and foggy as they tromped through it, making as much noise as they could. Throat feeling scratchy, Stiles had given up shouting Derek's name for the most part. A dozen yards off to his right he could hear Jackson still calling, though he was beginning to sound worse for wear as well. It had started to drizzle two hours ago which was not making their journey any more pleasant.

They were close, though, and Stiles mustered up whatever amount of caring he could manage, and raised his voice once more. "Derek!"

Muted, soft silence met the call, and Stiles felt his heart sink a little more. He knew that they were close to the house, more than close enough for werewolf hearing to pick up on their shouting, if not their crashing around in the underbrush. A part of Stiles had hoped that Derek's pack had moved on, left Peter to his own bad decisions, and kept themselves safe. If they were gone, they couldn't have a bad run in with one of the camp hunting parties

Another part of him hated the idea of them being gone. Yes, Jackson couldn't take the bite if they were gone, and that was _safer_ for them all, but it still sat like stones in Stiles' chest. They shouldn't have had to leave.

This time when he raised his voice, he let a note of anger creep into it. "_Derek!_"

A low growl from behind him was all the warning he got before he found himself shoved up against the closest tree, a forearm so tight to his throat that he couldn't breathe, much less shout for help. Derek was very suddenly in his personal space, teeth bared, eyes narrowed. When he spoke it was gravel-low and full of irritation. "The hell do you think you're doing out here, kid?"

Stiles scrabbled at the arm nearly crushing his windpipe and Derek eased off enough to let him speak. "Looking for you, furball," he rasped, sucking in a breath as quick as he could. "And I'm not a kid. Get off me."

"No, you're worse," Derek hissed before releasing him, giving him one good, hard shove to the chest with his entire forearm in the process. "At least kids know better than to bring the whole forest down on themselves."

"You're not the whole forest," Stiles retorted, brushing off his shoulders and rubbing a hand at his throat. "We've been out here forever. I thought maybe you..." He made a motion with one hand off into the distance.

Derek understood, gave a little shake of his head. "I couldn't leave Peter behind. He's... my responsibility."

"You're in the wrong section for him," Stiles informed him, almost automatically. "He's south west of here by at least two miles."

"I know," Derek spat out, angry. "Where do you think we were when we heard you _idiots_ calling? What do you want?"

Stiles blinked at the abrupt question, then straightened and began looking for Jackson. The other man was nowhere in sight, and Stiles felt all of his skin prickle at the utter silence. "Where is Jackson?"

Derek tipped his head and for a moment Stiles thought he was going to ask him who Jackson was, but before he opened his mouth he realized that Derek was listening. He noted the slight lack of focus in his eyes, the way his face smoothed a little in thought, and the shift of attention as it went away from Stiles and then returned. "Erica has him."

"Well, what I want is for you to talk to him," Stiles said firmly. He jabbed a finger into Derek's chest, which earned him a low warning noise that he completely ignored. "Don't give me that, you _owe us_."

"I don't- whatever," Derek snapped, shoving Stiles in the correct direction. "I assume you're going to stay in the woods shouting if I don't."

"Sounds accurate," Stiles replied as he allowed himself to be moved.

A short distance away, closer than Stiles was comfortable with considering he hadn't heard a scuffle at all, they found Jackson and Erica. She had him on the ground, a knee against his throat, hands pinned. From the rasp of his breath, Stiles could tell she was only just giving him enough room to stay alive. As soon as he realized it he was at her side, shouldering her off of him; or attempting to, as he found that moving her anywhere she didn't want to be was very much akin to trying to having an argument with a boulder.

"Let him up!" Stiles insisted through ground teeth. Erica snarled at him, unimpressed, but Derek silenced her with a sharp noise. Relenting, she allowed Stiles to remove her from Jackson, who began coughing as he surged into a sitting position.

"I'm going... to kick... your ass..." Jackson gasped, face scrunched up in disdain.

"Jackson," Stiles warned. With one hand he helped Jackson to his feet and then put himself between Jackson and Erica. "You wanted to find them, here they are. Try not to be an asshole while you ask them for favors."

"Favors?" Derek echoed, sounding very alarmed. Stiles was too busy glaring at Jackson to try to assure the wolf of anything.

"Me? But-" Jackson began.

"You," Stiles cut him off. "If you're not ready to say it, you're definitely not ready to do it." He folded his arms across his chest and sat back on one hip, stance screaming stubborn expectation.

Jackson scowled, but he turned to face Derek. The two glared at one another, lips pursed, before Jackson finally rasped a sigh and shook his head as if all of this were too ridiculous to even deal with right now. "I want-" He straightened his shoulders and steeled himself. "I want the bite. Please," he lumped onto the end, the word sounding uncomfortable on his tongue.

"No," Derek responded flatly, then turned his attention to Stiles. "You brought him all the way out here and endangered both your lives to ask that when you knew the answer would be no?"

"I didn't _know_," Stiles remarked, then immediately waved his hand to brush aside the issue. "Look, he's got a good reason, if you just-"

"No," Derek repeated. It was the stubborn, no-nonsense voice people used when they didn't want someone to argue with them, and Stiles didn't pay any attention to it at all.

"If we don't come back, Scott will send someone straight to you," Stiles told him, low and serious and it wasn't exactly a lie despite that Scott had no idea he and Jackson were out here alone. They weren't scheduled for an actual patrol.

Derek hesitated, looking at Stiles as though trying to gauge him. "You're trying to _coerce_ me?" he asked, incredulous, his pale eyes narrowing.

"No!" Stiles protested, even though he actually was. "I'm not- I'm asking you nicely." He rubbed a hand over the top of his head in frustration and let out a rough breath. "But, you know, coercion is plan B."

Snorting, Derek motioned to Erica and she stepped back away from them, ready to follow him away from the humans. "You can stay out here," he told them sharply. "But you're going to get yourselves killed."

"Derek," Stiles pleaded as Derek turned away from them, not really sure what he was asking. Derek tensed, but he didn't turn back around to face him. "Can I just- Can I talk to you alone for a minute? Please."

Erica made a noise of disgust as Derek sighed. Though he still didn't turn, he muttered an agreement and began to move away from Erica and Jackson both. Stiles straightened as he realized he'd gotten his opportunity. When he looked to Jackson, his squadmate just flashed him a venomous scowl, so he rolled his eyes and trotted after Derek's retreating form. A flutter of worry brushed across his thoughts for a moment, over leaving Jackson alone with Erica, but he let it pass. He was already doing enough; if Jackson managed to get himself killed in the next five minutes, he probably deserved it.

As soon as they were out of sight, Derek turned on Stiles. "What," he bit out, and even Stiles could hear the strain in his voice.

He sighed, moved a little closer to Derek than was strictly necessary- Derek could probably hear him talking from half a mile away. "Okay, look," he began, catching Derek's gaze. "If you're going to just abandon us to sink or swim with this whole werewolf thing, at least leave us with the tools we need to survive it. Scott doesn't need you to babysit him, and neither does Jackson, and we're not going to send anyone after you for doing it. We're not going to give you away. But this is going to be really hard for Scott to do alone. He'll be Omega without someone else."

"Then you take it," Derek suggested softly.

Stiles swallowed, stomach swooping at the thought. For an instant he wanted it, could feel the power being a werewolf would give him, the heightened senses and strength. It was overwhelming, but only for an instant before he pushed it down and shook his head. When he spoke his words caught on the tightness of his throat. "It has to be Jackson."

"It doesn't," Derek murmured, and Stiles had to look away from him then.

Stiles had been busy, been keeping himself busy on purpose to keep thoughts of the wolf pack at bay. He hadn't wanted to admit to Scott that he would have stayed longer, wanted desperately to learn more from them, but he couldn't hide it from himself. He'd been fascinated by Derek from the moment he'd come up against him in the clearing and the words _we don't kill humans_ had fallen from his lips. Now, faced with him close and quiet, Stiles could almost imagine that Derek's gentle objection reflected a similar fascination.

"You don't want him to be alone," Derek continued. Stiles could swear the werewolf twitched closer by infinitesimal increments as he spoke, but he couldn't bring himself to put more distance between them now. He could feel the heat radiating from Derek's body. "I get it. But it doesn't have to be that guy." His voice dropped low and Stiles closed his eyes. "It could be you."

It took three tries to clear his throat enough to speak, and even then his voice was thin and shaky. He wondered if Derek could smell his attraction, could pinpoint it for what it was as Scott had been unable to do. Quite frankly it was embarrassing, but Stiles ploughed ahead with every ounce of resolution he could muster. "It can't," he managed. He let out a heavy breath and opened his eyes. "Jackson doesn't want it for himself, okay?"

Derek's eyes narrowed and Stiles could _feel_ him separating them back to their own sides of the whole mess. The distance twisted uncomfortably in his gut. "He's not doing it for Scott."

"No, he's not," Stiles agreed. "I didn't- this isn't really my place, and I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but Jackson- he's doing this for his wife, Lydia." He knew that he was stumbling over his words, but he was grasping for the right ones, the ones that would convince Derek that this was right. "She can't- her body- they've-"

"Stiles," Derek interrupted, the low warning tone sending a bolt of something hot through Stiles. "Spit it out."

"She can't have kids," Stiles blurted, like ripping off a bandaid. He shook his head, feeling miserable for telling Lydia's secret to what amounted to a stranger, though he knew it was necessary. "She's not _sterile_, her body just attacks anything foreign. Jackson thinks a werewolf baby could heal fast enough to survive."

Derek's brows knit and Stiles could see the horror on his face plain as day. "Do you have any idea how painful that would be?"

"Yeah," Stiles admitted on a breath, barely audible. "I know. And I think he knows too."

"You don't even know if it would work," Derek accused.

Stiles met his eyes, kept his voice as even as possible. "Do you think it would?"

For a moment Derek just regarded Sterek without a word and Stiles thought perhaps he wouldn't answer. Perhaps he would just leave Stiles there for even considering the notion, for expecting that he could use the gift of werewolf powers toward an end. It was on the tip of Stiles' tongue to apologize to Derek, to just turn back and tell Jackson that it was no use, good game, thanks for playing, and drag him back to camp. He got as far as opening his mouth when Derek responded.

"Maybe." He gave a little shake of his head, the sort that expressed how terrible of an idea it was, and dropped his gaze.

Swallowing, Stiles reached out, let one knuckle brush against Derek's shoulder to get back his attention. The werewolf was warm, far warmer than Stiles had been expecting. "Please, Derek. I- He loves her, and this may be their only shot at that happily-ever-after, 2.5-kids-and-a-puppy life. She deserves that, all right? She deserves the whole world."

"You love her," Derek said, and it wasn't a question or an accusation, and maybe that was worse. It was Stiles' turn to drop his gaze, give a huffy little laugh that sounded more like pain than it did amusement.

"Yeah, I did," he admitted. "She's my friend now, and I still care what happens to her. So are you gonna do this for them or what?"

"No," Derek responded plainly. He watched Stiles' lips become a thin line, watched Stiles clench his jaw and roll his eyes and turn halfway back toward Jackson before he continued. "I'll do it for you, though."

Confused, Stiles turned back to face him. "I don't want the bite," he said slowly.

Derek's brow quirked up and Stiles heard Scott's voice in his memory- _It's when you lie._ If Derek heard his heart pick up, he didn't mention it. "I'll turn him," Derek clarified, holding Stiles' gaze with a seriousness that should have been unsettling but only caused a flutter of heat low in Stiles' belly. "Because you're asking. But he comes back with me, to heal."

"Okay," Stiles agreed before Derek could take back the offer. "He won't like that, but I can convince him it's necessary."

"You should tell him that the bite could kill him," Derek warned. "It could go either way and there's no way to tell until after it's done. You make sure he's willing to take that risk."

"I will," he assured him, then shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Do I need- I mean, will I have to stay as well? Like with Scott?" He wasn't sure how the note of hope slithered into his tone, but he didn't regret it. He also didn't miss the way Derek swallowed thickly at the suggestion. He wondered if Derek was thinking about Stiles being in his bed again- Stiles certainly was.

"No," Derek bit out. "I'm going to trust you to keep your mouth shut, for your friend's sake." There was a moment during which Stiles gave consideration to telling Derek that he would keep the wolf's secret for _Derek's_ sake, but it passed a heartbeat later when Derek continued. "Does his mate know he is doing this?"

Stiles shook his head, giving a little lift of his shoulders. "I don't know."

"You don't know or you don't want to know?" Derek asked. It made Stiles uncomfortable how much it sounded like an accusation.

"I didn't ask," Stiles responded, trying not to sound too testy. "Because it's not my business."

"She should know," Derek told him, but it wasn't quite a demand, and Stiles tipped his head.

"Is that a condition?" he inquired softly. "Of Jackson getting bitten?"

Derek's eyes tracked over Stiles, taking him in, assessing him, before he finally took in a deep breath and let it out heavily. "No," he decided at last. "I agreed to give it, and it's his decision to take it or not. But she _should_ know, Stiles."

Of course Stiles knew what Derek was telling him, even if Derek wouldn't say it aloud. He wanted Stiles to tell her what was going on, despite - or perhaps because - Jackson wouldn't tell her himself. His decision was going to affect her just as much, if not more, than it would Jackson. Stiles knew that Jackson should have spoken with her about this before they left, but Stiles also knew that Jackson was unlikely to discuss his feelings with anyone, even Lydia. "She should," he agreed softly. "I think Jackson just didn't want to give her false hope."

At that, Derek gave a small nod. "Okay," he conceded. Without another word, he just left, heading back toward where they had left Jackson and Erica. Stiles hesitated, surprised at the abrupt end of the conversation, then followed after.

Jackson was exactly where they had left him, lounged back against one of the thicker trees and fiddling with something on his wrist. He glanced up when Derek neared and Stiles saw the flick of his eyes off to the right that told him where Erica was hiding. Derek must have seen it too and he put himself between her and Stiles without a word. When she melted from the underbrush, it was with a hooded smile.

"So?" she inquired before Jackson even had a chance.

"We'll take him back with us," Derek told her evenly, though his eyes never left Jackson's. "If he wants it, he can have it."

Erica's lip curled a little. "So, what? We're just-"

"Yes," Derek told her sharply, clearly the end of the discussion. Stiles felt his eyes widen- alpha looked good on Derek already.

"Really?" Jackson asked, small and hushed, and Stiles realized he'd fully expected to be turned away at best. He could see the taut line of Jackson's shoulders and the faint tremble in his hands he was trying to hide with the way he was still picking at his wrist.

Derek stepped closer, into Jackson's personal space, and forced him to meet his eyes. "I'm going to make this very clear, human," he said, low and dangerous enough that even Stiles' skin prickled at the threat from across the small, open space. "I'm not giving you the bite because you asked. I'm not giving it to you because I'm _nice_ or because I think you'll be _nice_."

Jackson swallowed, the sound of it thick in the air between them. "Then why?" he managed. Stiles' eyes flicked to his hands, where he could see that Jackson had stopped shaking.

"Because Stiles is right," Derek said simply, drawing away from Jackson again, just a little. "If we take off, Scott becomes a lone wolf, which is not remotely as suave as it sounds. He'll be weakened, and the full moons will be harder to survive, much less stay in control for. So you come with us, you take the bite, and if you don't die, you get to go home and maybe not take a silver bullet."

He patted Jackson on the chest with the flat of his hand and motioned to Erica with the tip of his head that they were leaving. She gave both humans a withering look before she shifted, dropping to all fours and disappearing from view almost before they had registered the change. Stiles felt his skin crawl at how silent her movement was; only seconds passed before he could not longer hear her. Derek threw a glance over his shoulder to make sure Jackson would follow.

Stiles offered Jackson a thin smile and clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be fine," he offered with as much cheer as he could muster. Derek's _if you don't die_ lingered heavy in the air still. "I'll see you tomorrow sometime."

Fingers snagged at his elbow as he made to leave, and he halted. Jackson fidgeted, looking put out despite that he had been the one to stop Stiles. Finally he took a breath and without actually looking at Stiles said: "Take care of her, okay?" He scowled the moment the words were out of his mouth, but Stiles could see the worry when their eyes met. "If I don't... you know. If it doesn't work."

Stiles clenched his jaw, frowning. Pulling his elbow from roughly Jackson's grasp, he jabbed a finger into Jackson's chest, hard. He didn't care if it bruised; Jackson would heal if it worked, if the infection harmonized with his body rather than burning it. "You'll be lucky if I never mention to Lydia that you even _suggested_ that," he hissed. "Your dumb ass had better be back at camp by tomorrow night."

Jackson's scowl returned and he swatted at Stiles' hand. For a moment they glared, and then a piercing whistle from Derek broke the moment. Stiles looked over and Derek's attention slid sideways until their eyes met. A shiver crept down Stiles' spine and he swallowed before giving a tiny nod to Derek.

A moment later, Stiles was alone in the forest, wondering how he had gotten himself into this mess.

* * *

_There's a week left until the full moon, and we shouldn't be in this position. Peter should be here, leading us, and we should be halfway to the mountains by now._

_ Instead, there's a turnwolf in the kitchen that Erica is livid about, Isaac and Boyd went for a run alone after a load of bullshit about being just fine, and Laura has been in my room three times tonight trying to start conversations about my 'new hobby.' I've never had to lock a door on a pack mate before._

_ As if it wasn't bad enough, his scent is all over __Jackson__, all over the forest worse than before... all over my own clothes as well, and it's the last thing I needed today. It shouldn't make a difference. He's just one lousy human, one stupid, righteous human and I know it's the full moon getting to me, because I know I'd never be this bothered otherwise. I wouldn't care, otherwise. _

_ And you're only a journal, so you'll never hear my heartbeat say I'm lying._

_ I just don't know what to do. I've never seen a human throw their lot in so readily with a super, even if they used to be friends. They treat us as abominations, as a plague to be eradicated, and they always have._

_ I've never had a human look at me like that- like I was a person, too._

_ Maybe it's stupid, to want that. But I do._

* * *

The library. It was one of Stiles' favorite haunts in the recovered town, with its three long floors and shelves of worn books like a forest of knowledge. His own home town's library had only had one floor with more reference material than it had stories. Sometimes, as he leaned against one of the towering shelves of books on the third floor of the Beacon Hills library, a hardcover mystery novel open in his lap, he caught himself thinking that the apocalypse hadn't been all bad. He would never admit it out loud, but he was a little grateful that the end had meant a new beginning in a more fortunate town.

Beacon Hills wasn't huge by any means, and Stiles knew that the first floor of the building had once served as the town's records archive, but it was still impressive to him. Gerard's people had converted the first floor of the building into his own records keeping archive, and it was to there that the teams coming in from their patrols reported after a cursory examination from the perimeter crew. Usually Stiles would help Scott give their debrief with the rest of the team and then Stiles would stay behind to wind down with a book. Somehow he figured he wouldn't make it to the portion of the science fiction section he'd been eating his way through slowly but surely.

When he arrived, Lydia, Elias, and Gregory, the papers part of their unit, were sitting at one of the tables, a map spread between them and the soft sound of their voices drifting to greet him. Gregory glanced up as the door opened, and gave a little, mock salute. Stiles smiled, and smiled at Lydia when she looked up as well.

"Where's Jackson?" Lydia asked before he'd even crossed the room to him. He felt his stomach sink a little, but he shrugged.

"He's just making a few laps around the perimeter fence to run off some energy," Stiles lied glibly. "He said he'd be in shortly."

Elias turned his laughter into a small, choked cough as everyone looked at him. "What?" he asked. "Like Jackson does anything he doesn't have to do?" He scoffed and began folding the map they'd been looking at with Lydia. "Your whole team's lost its damn mind, Stiles."

"Maybe he's out looking for that alpha that bit Raul," Gregory suggested slowly, picking up his hands from where they were spread on the map so that Elias could take the rest of it. "Wasn't he friends with Raul's team?"

Everyone sobered some, and it occurred to Stiles in the moment of silence that Peter was not, in fact, an alpha anymore. His stomach turned over; a beta's bite wouldn't turn a human. The silver bullet that had put Raul down had been completely unnecessary and he would never be able to tell anyone without revealing what he knew about the werewolves and _why_.

"I think he's probably had enough of werewolves," Stiles said dryly, though it sounded strained even to his own ears. Lydia made a face while no one but Stiles was looking at her.

Since they hadn't seen anything of interest while out, Stiles' account of his patrol with Jackson was brief. Neither Elias nor Gregory seemed to notice, but when he was finished he caught Lydia's eye and twitched his head slightly toward the door. He needed to tell her about Jackson, but not in front of the others. They had elected to keep Scott's transformation secret from as many people as possible, including the rest of their unit. She just nodded and immediately ceased paying attention to him for the rest of the discussion.

He left knowing that she would slip away and follow him in a few moments. If there were more information to file she might have taken longer, or else had to leave Gregory and Elias to page through the records already on the shelves to file any creatures spotted or seen along with similar accounts. Observations and information about the creatures would be put to paper in case the camp needed to deal with another of the same later. If it was an immediate threat, Elias would take the relevant information to Gerard (or more likely to Chris, his son) and the camp and the teams would be put on alert.

As it was, Stiles stopped just outside the doors of the library and a few minutes later Lydia pushed through the double doors. He didn't even get out an apology before she socked him in the arm hard enough to bruise.

"Don't lie to me, Stiles," she hissed, grabbing his arm right over where she had punched. She began dragging him in the direction of the hospital while he protested. "Where is my husband?"

"Lydia, oh my god, let go, let-" She squeezed harder and the rest of his protest was swallowed by a yelp. "He's fine!"

"He is not _fine_," Lydia snapped, stopping mid-step to turn on him. He managed to put a step of distance between them. "If he was fine, you'd have told us where he really is. Eli's right- Jackson doesn't take jogs around the perimeter. So where is he?"

Stiles swallowed and tried for a moment to think of some way to get out of telling her where Jackson was while they were in such a public place. He knew that look, though, and when she crossed her arms and leaned on one hip to wait, he lowered his voice. "Look, don't be mad, okay?" he pleaded. "Jackson went to see the werewolves."

"He _what_?" Lydia interrupted, with way too much volume for keeping secrets. "And you didn't stop him?"

Shifting uncomfortably, Stiles unconsciously took another step back. "There's a good possibility I took him to them," he admitted with a wince.

"You _what_?" Stiles dodged Lydia's next swipe with upheld hands, ready to catch her wrists if need be. When she failed to connect she stopped and stood up straight, taking a deep breath to calm herself, and Stiles could practically see her counting to ten inside her head. "You took Jackson out to a pack of werewolves, after what they did to Scott?"

"They didn't do that to Scott!" Stiles protested before he could consider how bad of an idea it was argue this particular point. As long as he was digging, he decided to go for broke. "And even if they did bite him, that's... sort of what Jackson wanted!"

The way Lydia held completely still, not even breathing, was more terrifying than her mock attempts at bodily harm. Stiles stood firm and waited, watching her eyes flicker through the emotions, processing. He knew she was angry, that she was going to keep being angry for a while, but he also knew that she would get over it. She would want to know _why_ Jackson did anything as stupid as taking the bite, and then Stiles could explain. Until then she was a ticking bomb, detonated by any interruption.

"So let me get this straight," she slowly, in such a level tone that Stiles knew he was in enough deep shit that he might never get out again. "You went out with my husband on the pretense of performing a patrol for the safety of this camp and instead the two of you somehow located a pack of lethal werewolves that were supposed to be long gone so that he could ask them to turn him into one of them, and then you came back to camp alone and lied to me about it? Does that about cover it?"

"Well- ah- when you put it like that," he hedged, pulling a face that spoke of pain. He dropped his gaze so she couldn't see the guilt.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" she snapped, but it was quiet still. He could tell she was just as aware as he was that they were standing in the middle of the street where they could be overhead. "What were you thinking? What were either of you thinking?"

For a moment, Stiles considered not telling her. It wasn't his business; it was Jackson's business, and Jackson should be the one to tell her. He should have told her before they left, but she would never have let him leave. Stiles considered that perhaps that would have been better, but what was done was done, and he had all but promised Derek that he would let Lydia in on the secret.

That didn't mean he had to meet her eyes while he said it. "He was thinking it was for you," he told her softly, heard her breath catch. He continued miserably. "He wants kids- you both want kids, Lydia. He thought maybe you could have one, if it was a werewolf, if it could heal fast enough. I thought Scott's gonna need a pack to get through this, so it just made sense."

When she didn't answer, his eyes flicked up and his chest constricted to see the wet shine in her eyes. "You are both such idiots," she murmured. He wasn't sure if she said it because of what they had done or why they had done it, or maybe because he was touching on subjects he knew were old, deep hurts. "I need to see him, before he does this."

"Lydia, no-"

"Stiles," Lydia said firmly. "I need to. He shouldn't be doing this, and you know it."

"It's already done," Stiles told her, glad she couldn't hear his heartbeat. He had no idea if Derek had done it or not, if Derek would wait to see if Stiles showed up, or if Stiles would show up with Lydia. "It's six-miles-and-change out and it's already getting dark. Peter's still on the loose, and even if he wasn't, he's not the only threat out there. Jackson is safe where he is, so let's just keep calm, okay? I'm going back out tomorrow to fetch him, and you can come with me then."

She pursed her lips as he spoke until they were a thin line. When he finished, she crossed her arms and he thought she was going to insist on going no matter what, but instead she said: "Fine. But you are telling Scott right now and so help me if he already knew."

"He doesn't," Stiles admitted. That didn't make him feel better. He knew he should definitely have talked to Scott before leaving, but he also knew that Scott would have told him no. Scott would have done stupid things to stop them, because Scott was protective of his team. They were his family, in a way- his pack, and Stiles felt the increasingly familiar pang of worry about whether or not they were doing the right things in regards to supernaturals. "Do you know where he is?"

"Where else?" Lydia said, uncrossing her arms after having won at least one demand.

Of course he knew where. The past two days had seen Allison in the hospital more and more as she prepared for the big day, and with Scott not leading the patrols any more he had been sticking to her side like glue. It was good for both of them, Stiles thought, because Allison needed Scott around for support just as much as Scott needed to be around her to anchor him to his humanity.

Stiles gave a nod that said _fair enough_, and motioned for Lydia to precede him.

* * *

The soft knock on the door broke the flow of the story and for a heartbeat Morrell wondered how much trouble she would be in for committing murder. Stiles cut himself off mid-sentence, amber-brown eyes widening as his body tensed like he was going to fight. In the next instant Morrell was on her feet telling Stiles it was okay before she moved for the door. The scent of fresh bread and warmed meat met her at the entrance but she used her body to block the opening.

Outside the door, the camp resident assigned to bring them food gave her a small, surprised look. "Food," he offered, holding up a tray with enough food for her and Stiles both. "You... do want it, right?"

She flashed him a smile and held out her hands. "Of course," she said, though it sounded more like _scram_. "Thank you."

Catching the hint, he passed over the food and scrambled to get away from the room. She watched him go for a second and then pulled the food into the room and let the door click shut. When she turned, she found Stiles staring steadily at her. The panic, at least, had faded, replaced with a certain sort of caution, as though he had suddenly realized where he was and what he was doing.

Morrell paced back over to the table and set down the tray along one edge. She reached over and clicked off the recording device, not taking her eyes from Stiles'. "They just brought us some food," she informed him, keeping her tone even like she would for a wild animal. "Still warm."

He shifted, uncertainty written in every line of his body, and she took her seat so that she was not towering over him. He relaxed just a fraction at that. Then his eyes clouded, just like that, and he looked away from her, toward the food. She knew that he wasn't looking at the food; his sight may have been in line with it, but whatever it was he saw was not in the room. Whatever has his eyes flicking back and forth as he watched, it was nothing she could see or hear or touch.

"Stiles," she murmured, not quite a demand. Yet.

His head ticked and she heard the shackles rattle as his hands clasped together. "No," he mumbled under his breath, eyes shuttering closed. His brow furrowed and his shoulders hunched. She wasn't sure if he was talking to her or whatever demon had found him.

"Stiles," she repeated, more firm this time. He flinched and guilt zinged through her like static. "There's food here for you, Stiles. You need to eat."

"Need to eat," he echoed. She hated when he did this, just began repeating what she said regardless of whether it made sense. He swallowed thickly and opened his eyes, staring blankly at the floor.

She looked over at the food, piecing together what it probably was. "There's goat and cheese today," she offered.

"Goat cheese," Stiles murmured, brow furrowing and then smoothing. She waited patiently, watching him as his eyes flickered back and forth at nothing, unblinking. The stillness with which he held himself in these moments was becoming familiar, even the way he didn't breathe so much as exist. He was cycling, as near as she could tell, and he would come back to her soon.

Finally, almost a full five minutes later, Stiles' eyes cleared and he focused on the food in front of them as if mystified over how it had appeared. When he looked up and caught her eyes on him, she smiled. Reaching over, she plucked one of the apples from the plate and passed it over to him. "Eat," she ordered quietly.

Stiles bit into the fruit without taking his eyes from her, looking for all the world like he suspected she had performed magic to create the food. She could see he was hungry, though, his previously methodical manner of eating discarded in favor of speed. After a moment of only watching, she joined in, taking one of the thick slices of meat and cutting it into bits. It was tough, had been cooked too long under the wrong conditions, and she found herself missing the stewpot over the open fire she and Jane used on the road.

For a while they ate in silence. She let Stiles select what he wanted from the plate first, smiled when he always left equal portions for both of them. It can't have been easy. She knew most of what he'd been fed during his internment was hard tack, the rough, tasteless kind this camp produced en masse for the patrols to carry with them. This - the slice of meat, the baked potato with hand-churned butter and rough-ground salt, the two little ruddy, brown apples - would probably seem extravagant if he were in a state to appreciate it.

He wasn't, and she didn't feel like trying to bring him around for something inconsequential to what she needed. It had been a long day, and he'd given her a lot to think about already. Not enough to appease the council that was refusing to let Jane take Stiles and Lydia away from here, but enough for Morrell to begin piecing together what they knew with what they guessed.

They had known Scott had been bitten and that it was involuntary, but not that Allison had knowingly hidden him from the camp. They had known Lydia was human, but not that she couldn't take the bite; or that Jackson had taken it willingly for her. They had known Stiles was human, but not that he had refused the offer of a bite. They knew that the Hale pack left the BHC area at the full moon, but no one knew the circumstances that had caused Jackson and Lydia and Stiles to put themselves into position to go with them. Everyone Jane had spoken to assured her that Stiles would never have left his father.

"Stiles?" she asked, soft and low. When his eyes flicked up to her, they were clear and bright. "Did you tell Scott about the bite? Jackson's bite?"

He blinked owlishly, and his eyes lost focus, but in the good way. "Yeah," he replied, like he was just figuring it out himself. "Scott was _livid_ when we told him. He kept saying no one _wanted_ the bite, but I think he was the only one who didn't want it, you know? Like after everyone saw that he was still... Scott. Who wouldn't want super senses and speed healing and all that _strength_?" He loosed a brittle laugh.

"It sounds enticing," she agreed, barely a murmur so that she wouldn't interrupt him.

"Yeah." He sounded far away again. "But, I mean, he got over it. I explained why he did it, and Lydia confirmed it even though she was still pissed. I think Allison agreeing was what really sold it to him, especially when she concluded all by herself that he could use a pack. We'd all seen omega wolves, and they were never... right. They were always a little off, a little-" He twirled his finger around his ear instead of finishing the sentence. "She told him a pack mate might help stabilize him."

"And he agreed?" Morrell asked.

"Of course, yeah," Stiles told her, scoffing. Everyone knew- well, everyone _had_ known that much about werewolf packs. "So I mean, it wasn't the right decision, it was never the right decision for Jackson to take the bite, but there was a lot of logic backing it up. It was one of those 'it seemed like a good idea' moments. Allison was having a kid, Lydia wasn't having kids, Jackson was an adult who could make his own choices, we already knew we could hide a wolf with the right set of circumstances, Scott was turning alone... it just made sense, I guess."

She nodded along with what he was saying. It didn't make sense, of course. It would have been hard enough hiding one werewolf from the camp, much less two of them. "And then?" she prompted.

Stiles gave a little shrug. "And then nothing. He wasn't the type to blame people when it wasn't their fault, and Jackson wasn't there. He would never have told Lydia that she couldn't have a chance at having what he and Allison had. So he just told us to be safe about it, please just keep everyone _safe_. He just kept saying that _word_ like anything was ever going to be _safe_ again here."

"It wasn't," she said, not quite a suggestion but not quite a question either.

Laughter barked from Stiles, harsh and cold. "Of course not, of course it wasn't safe."

"So you left," she guessed. "Because it wasn't safe?"

Stiles shook his head, just a tiny bit, and picked at the crumbs on the tray in front of him. "No, that's not why we left."

"Then why?" she asked. "We know that you left, but no one can tell us why."

The look he gave her was puzzled, his head tipping slightly to one side. "Why?" he echoed.

"You, Jackson, and Lydia left with the pack at the full moon," Morrell reminded him, afraid he was slipping again so soon. "I can guess why Jackson and Lydia went... but you had no reason. Your dad was here, Scott was here, you're human... so why?"

"We had to leave," Stiles told her, though it seemed more like a revelation, as if he couldn't figure out why they had to leave, either. His brows drew together, his shoulders hunching up a little. He shook his head, even though she'd said nothing for him to deny. "We left because they caught Peter and they were just going to kill him, but he told them."

"Told them?" Morrell echoed, raking through her memories of the documents she'd been allowed to read through so far for any mention of what Peter may have told the party that captured him. There was nothing.

Stiles looked up, met her gaze, and she could see the betrayal as fresh as if it had just happened. It was so quiet she could hear the click of his throat as he swallowed. "He told them there was a wolf in the camp. He told them about Scott."

* * *

The corridor flickered around her with the light of the candle lantern in her hand. It might have been eerie, the darkness swallowing everything behind her, the sound of footsteps clattering on ahead of her as she walked, except that she'd spent most of the last ten years on the road amongst all of the things that went bump in the night. An empty corridor was not high on her list of terrifying things.

In her other hand she clutched a bowl of strawberries. They were in season and the camp had been turning their scouting groups into gathering squads during daylight hours. She'd visited the berry fields north of the camp with a squad the day before and was impressed at how expansive they were, at how well the fields did with the minimal amount of protection afforded to them. She wondered if the orchards she could see in the distance were similarly protected, but she hadn't been allowed near them to find out. They did let her pick a few of the plump, vibrant-red berries to take back with her.

Instead of eating them, she stored them the in coolest part of the room she'd been given for their stay. If she was lucky, the sight of the berries would coax the girl into focus, if only for a few moments. All Jane needed was a few moments alone with her while she was even semi-lucid.

The door was plain, completely unadorned with anything to differentiate it from any of the dozen others she had passed on her way. The number on the side read D317 in fading silver letters, and Jane waved to the guard sitting idly in a chair before knocked just below the numbers. She knew it didn't matter if she knocked; the occupant wouldn't answer. Maybe she wasn't capable of answering anymore, so as soon as she knocked she twisted the handle, knowing it would be unlocked.

There was no reason to lock the door of a prisoner who had no will to leave.

When she nudged open the door the soft noise of her greeting stuck in her throat at what she saw. One the bed sat two girls, one with long red hair, one with black. The dark-haired girl Jane had only seen once before, the day she and Miranda had arrived, but she knew who she was. Everyone in the camp knew who Allison Argent was. The girl was silent as she watched Jane slip into the room, holding up the small wooden bowl of fruit in explanation.

The other girl, the redhead, didn't give any indication that she noticed Jane's arrival. She sat unnaturally still, her right hand clasped between both of Allison's, her eyes blank and fixed upon nothing. Catatonia, Jane's mind supplied. It had been the same way every time Jane had been allowed to visit Lydia.

"You're not supposed to be down here," Allison said softly, no particular malice in the words. She remained seated, hands still clasping Lydia's in her lap.

"Neither are you," Jane returned, just as gently. "I won't tell if you won't."

Allison considered this for a moment before turning her gaze to Lydia. Jane let her, stood silently with the candle lamp and the berries and just waited. After a time, Allison let out the breath she'd been holding and carefully set Lydia's hand back in her own lap. Lydia made no move to shift or readjust, and Jane's skin prickled.

Getting to her feet, Allison held out her hand for the bowl of berries. Jane didn't hesitate to hand them to her, watching as she set them on the bed beside Lydia. "There are strawberries, Lydia," she said softly. It sounded like surrender, not hope. "They're real."

Jane's brow furrowed at that, but she remained silent as Allison smoothed a hand over Lydia's head and pressed a quick kiss to her hair. She murmured a soft goodbye and then began herding Jane toward the exit. It was frustrating, to say the least, but Jane allowed herself to be moved. At least Allison would talk to her.

The door clicked shut behind them after Allison gave one final glance back. Jane could see the weariness in her eyes, the slouch of her shoulders. "What are you down here?" Allison murmured, drawing Jane away from the guard despite that the guy looked to be resting his eyes a little too intensely to be able to hear them.

"Bringing strawberries to your friend in there," Jane told her evenly.

Allison gave her a look that said she didn't believe that bullshit for a moment. "I would suggest not lying to me, Ms. Jane," she told her. "You may have brought strawberries but that's not why you're here."

A smile twitched at Jane's lips. "My apologies," she conceded. "I came to speak to Ms. Martin."

Hurt flashed in Allison's eyes, sharp and bright, and the muscles in her jaw jumped before she spoke. "You know she won't talk to you."

Jane nodded, because she did understand. When she had first been allowed in to see Lydia, they had told her that despite the crescent scar across her throat, the girl could speak. She hadn't, not in the two years she'd been incarcerated in the belly of the hospital, but Jane had been officially assured by the council that she _could_. She had been told colloquially that they'd had to move her to a part of the hospital they could sound proof against her shrieking screams in the dead of night.

She didn't say any of this, though. She just tipped her head a little and gave a sad smile. "You still come down here," she pointed out, as gently as she was able.

Swallowing, Allison looked away from her. "That's different," she bit out. "She knows me."

"Does she?" Jane asked, and she knew it was cruel but she didn't take it back.

Allison closed her eyes and let out a heavy breath. "No," she said after a moment. "She did, once. She knew me before she left with them."

"And now?" Jane prompted, and Allison looked up to her.

"Now she thinks I'm one of the others." It might have been easier to hear if she had been heartbroken over it, but Jane could see that she'd accepted it long ago. It was a scar, rather than a fresh wound. "A hallucination. She doesn't think I'm real."

Jane managed not to frown. "How do you know?"

"She told me. The first time I visited," Allison responded, leaning back against the wall opposite Jane. "She hasn't said a word to me since... but I can see it, in the way she looks at me. In the way she _doesn't_ look at me, really. Past me, through me, near me... but she doesn't look _at_ me anymore."

Jane hummed an agreement, feeling guiltier than she expected at hearing the admission. Even before Stiles admitted to it, she had known that Allison was involved in the situation, just like everyone was involved in the situation. Since her arrival at the camp, she had been told in hushed tones by several denizens that Allison's husband had been one of _those_ wolves. Jane hadn't had to ask which wolves; there was only one pack associated with the Beacon Hills Camp.

For a time they sat in silence, Allison watching the flicker of the candlelight and Jane watching Allison. She wasn't going to press the girl one way or the other; though she held out hope that Allison would want to talk to her in private. There was so much the outside world didn't know about what had occurred here, and Stiles was only proving that more each day.

"You-" The words stuck in her throat and she swallowed to clear it before looking hesitantly at Jane. "You've been watching Stiles, haven't you?"

"When I have time," Jane answered.

"And he-" she hesitated. "How is he?"

Jane's brow furrowed. "You've visited him," Jane said, not a question. Of course Allison would have visited Stiles; she visited Lydia. She visited Lydia daily, even though Lydia was not half as lucid as Stiles. But she could see it in her eyes the next moment. "You haven't."

Guilt flushed over Allison's face and she looked away again. "I tried, when he first got brought in, after he healed, but he just... he lost it. Shouting. Trying to warn me. It was so stressful for him, I just... I couldn't go back."

"Do you want to go see him now?" she asked quietly.

"Yes," Allison told her, as if there could be no other answer. Then she sighed and shook her head a little. "But, I shouldn't. If I go now, it could mess things up for you and your partner. I'll see him when he's out."

Jane wasn't sure if it would be appropriate, but she reached out a hand and laid it gently on Allison's shoulder. "We will make sure he is released, regardless of anything else we do, Allison."

Though she slipped from Jane's grasp, Allison nodded and wiped discreetly at one eye with the heel of her hand. "Yeah," she said, tight throat making the words thick. "Yeah, thank you."

With a nod, Jane stepped back again, giving Allison her space. "We'll work on all of it. Put it all together bit by bit for your people and mine, and get this sorted."

Allison straightened her shoulders and visibly returned to the woman Jane had first met. "Well, Lydia's not going to be any good for that, and they're still dredging up papers for you. But maybe... do you want to see the site for yourself?" Allison asked, soft but sly, because they both knew what she was suggesting was against the rules the town council had laid down for Jane and Miranda. The light had returned to her eyes. "I can take you there, if you think it would help."

"It's two in the morning," Jane reminded her.

"I'm sorry," Allison responded in a tone that suggested she wasn't very sorry at all. "Am I waking you up?"

Jane's bark of laughter startled them both in the empty, echoing hall. "No, I suppose you're not," she conceded in good humor. "And I would very much appreciate a visit to the... site. Is it safe to go, in the dark?"

"It's never safe to go," Allison told her. "You know that. We may as well leave when no one can see us."

That set Jane back a little. "Are you not allowed out?"

"Technically?" Allison smiled, lifting her chin a little in defiance. "I'd like to see them try to keep me in. So?"

"I would appreciate the visit," Jane accepted, stepping back a little and gesturing for Allison to precede her. "Lead the way."

* * *

Notes: I just wanted to, like, thank you guys for being patient. We are about... maybe a fifth of the way through now? I'm kind of impressed anyone is still slogging through the sadness. It lightens up (relatively...) soon I promise. And we maybe get to find out more about Schrodinger's Pack soon!


	7. Chapter Seven

Title: The Final Pack

Author: Sparkle Itamashii / Kedreeva

Notes: Humankind is fighting its way back from near extinction against the superatural beings that fed upon the remaining humans in the aftermath of the 2012 apocalypse. On the front lines, Stiles' best friend gets bitten by a werewolf and Stiles must strike a bargain with wolves in order to save him.

* * *

**Chapter Seven  
**

* * *

The sun was peeking over the horizon by the time they reached the ruins, turning the sky a haze of pink and gold. Allison hesitated at the edge of the clearing, looking out over the remains of the old house. Most of what they could see was scorched, cracked, broken, the main portion of the house collapsed to a skeleton of its former self. Far to the right, part of the house was preserved by the huge, rotting oak that had fallen into it at some point in the distant past. Foliage had finally begun to reclaim the base of the house, climbing over the trunk of the tree to get at the rich nutrients it provided, but even that amount of life was made of boney sticks in the cold of January.

Jane moved past her, not having to ask if this was the place. Allison couldn't bring herself to follow. She had visited here a few times over the past couple of years, but she hadn't worked up the courage to investigate. She hadn't been able to touch any of it. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself and watched as Jane walked along the edge of the house, trailing her fingers softly over the rain-rotted wood.

Longing pulled at her, sharp and painful. She missed Scott.

* * *

With nothing left to discuss about Jackson, the group sat quietly in Allison's hospital room, grasping for anything to say next. Nothing seemed appropriate after such a heavy conversation and so Scott perched beside Allison on the bed and Lydia sat on the counter across from them with her lips pursed. She watched Stiles wheel himself around the room on the little examination stool as he tried to feel less guilty for not having said something about Jackson's plan earlier.

"I put in for our team to cover exploration of the new settlement area," Lydia supplied at last. Stiles crashed into the cupboards near her, forgetting to stick his feet out to catch himself. "For next month."

"Did Victoria have anything to say about that?" Stiles asked, glancing to Scott, who seemed just as surprised. They'd been planning on applying after they survived the full moon in a couple days.

Lydia smiled. "She said she was surprised Scott would want to take that sort of initiative so soon after the baby. She was really snooty about it. I reminded her that you're the squad lead now, Stiles."

"And?" he prompted. He and Victoria Argent had gotten along when he first arrived to camp, but his steadfast friendship with Scott had put them at odds. She seemed to think no one was good enough to be dating her daughter. Scott and Allison's marriage a year ago hadn't help her views much.

Shrugging, Lydia leaned back on her hands and kicked her feet a little. "She was impressed. She seemed-"

The sound of a gunshot in the street cut her short and drew their attention to the windows. Stiles was on his feet in an instant, Scott a step in front of him as they moved to see. Raucous cheering and shouting filtered through the glass and the boys exchanged worried looks. The camp knew better than that. It was well after dark and there was no telling what sort of supernaturals would be drawn in by loud noises and activity.

Scott made the decision first. "We have to go see."

"It looks like they're dragging someone," Stiles said, nose to the window. "You think someone got bit again?"

"They didn't drag Raul in," Lydia told them.

"They wouldn't make this much noise for a human," Scott mumbled, peering over Stiles' shoulder to get a better look. His eyesight was probably better, so Stiles dropped out of his way.

"You think they caught a super?" Lydia asked, leaning over without getting off the counter. Her knuckles were white where they grasped the edges. She dealt with paperwork, not supernatural creatures.

The group exchanged glances. There was only one supernatural being that had been hanging around the camp long enough to establish a presence, long enough to be caught. Stiles gave a little shrug and turned to Scott. "We'll go check it out. You should stay with Allison."

"Excuse me," Allison shot back at him, offended. "I can take care of myself. Go."

Scott raised his eyebrows at Stiles and Lydia hopped down from the counter. "We're not getting any younger," she quipped, moving past them.

At the hospital exit Scott paused, head cocked to one side. The gesture had bewildered the group at first, making Scott seem perpetually confused. Now they knew he was listening to something they couldn't hear and so they slowed, waiting. Lydia, not having spent as much time around Scott as Stiles had, looked toward the crowd. Stiles, however, turned his attention solely to his best friend.

"Rawson's squad," Scott reported. "You were right; they caught a Super." He met Stiles' gaze. "They're saying it's an alpha."

Gooseflesh rose on Stiles' arms, but he ignored it. "It's not Derek," he said firmly. Derek had no reason to be this close to camp and he certainly wouldn't have let himself get caught. "It can't- It's probably Peter. They still think Peter is an alpha."

"Probably," Scott agreed, though he didn't look entirely convinced. His eyes took on the distant quality that said he was listening elsewhere again. "Jing and Devon got hurt, but they're alive. They're saying he..." His brow crinkled and he looked to Stiles. "They're saying the alpha _surrendered_?"

"That doesn't make any sense!" Stiles exclaimed. "Peter wouldn't- what? What is it?" he demanded, because Scott's face had drained of color and he was staring in horror at Stiles.

"He told them," Scott breathed, barely audible over the noise of the gathering crowd. Stiles' stomach swooped sickeningly. "He told them about the bite."

* * *

_ Peter's been taken by BHC hunters. We were so close we could hear the skirmish, enough that we knew Peter wasn't fighting them. He wanted to be caught. When we got there, his scent was swarmed with human stench. Boyd followed it to the border fence, but there were too many people for him to get close. None of us can fathom why he let himself be caught, but it can't be good. They'll kill him, if they haven't already._

_ I don't know what to do now._

_ We should leave. I know that. Boyd's finished scavenging for parts for his damn cart, and he's got the meat already hung in it, ready to go. Erica has reminded me twice today that __Nevada__ is nice this time of year. Even Laura says it is looking grim if we stay much longer. We should dump the turnwolf by the camp, grab our stuff, and leave._

_ We should. I know._

_ Peter's as good as dead. So is __Jackson__ if we abandon him._

_ It's best if we leave. We'll be safer._

_ There's a few hours until dawn. I'll sort it out then. _

* * *

Candle lanterns lit the normally dark hospital halls as Stiles padded through them. After making sure that Lydia would take Scott someplace safe, someplace where the camp wouldn't find him for at least a few hours, Stiles had stationed himself so he could observe the hospital. He was glad they'd gotten out when they did; the only secure places were in the locked wards in the basement of the hospital. The group had headed straight for the building, and would have run over the top of the group. They might have found Scott.

It was a while, longer than he would have liked, before the crowd died down and wandered away from the building. Stiles passed the time naming those who exited until he was sure there were only a few left within before he moved. He had to get down to see Peter alone and he knew there was only a small window before that would be nearly impossible.

He rounded the last corner cautiously, knowing that there would be at least one guard standing duty. He also knew that whoever it was would be impromptu, someone who had volunteered, and that once Gerard found out there was a captive Super in the camp, he would ensure there were scheduled guards. He'd come down himself before long and Stiles had to be gone by then. He couldn't draw that sort of attention to Scott or the rest of the group.

"Stiles?" called a voice from the end of the hall. Stiles relaxed, recognizing the speaker.

"Loren," Stiles greeted, a little too loudly. He waved to the scout as he walked toward that end of the hall. "Should have known you'd volunteer to watch over the thing. You sure you're safe to be around it alone?"

Scowling, Loren banged on the door once with the butt of his rifle. "I'm not gonna shoot it," he spat at Stiles. "No matter who it killed, Gerard would have my skin if I did."

Stiles swallowed the guilt that jumped into his throat. Loren was on the hunting side of Raul's scouting team. They'd been good friends, if Stiles recalled, but that didn't change what he had to do now. "Yeah," he agreed. "Gerard's busy having Rawson's skin for bringing it into camp in the first place. You can bet he's going to be in a foul mood by the time he gets down here."

Loren eyed Stiles skeptically. "He send you down to check up on it?"

"Guard duty," Stiles corrected, patting his sidearm. "Full silver clip. He'll be down shortly. You might want to be scarce by then."

It was a lie. Of course it was a lie, and a part of him knew that he was burning bridges and that he was going to have a difficult time explaining his actions when this was over. But it would be over. Scott would be safe. Lydia would be safe. He would make sure of it, no matter what he had to do, including lying to other camp denizens like Loren.

Fortunately for Stiles, he was trustworthy enough to be believed when he needed it. Standing up from where he'd been sitting on the floor, Loren shook his head. "How'd you land that lucky shift?"

Stiles shrugged, patting Loren's shoulder as he passed. "Being friends with Scott, who won't leave Allison. Have a good night, man."

"You too," Loren called over his shoulder. Stiles watched as he disappeared around the corner, listened tensely to the sound of his footsteps until he couldn't hear them anymore. Then he waited another few heartbeats before he peeked over the edge of the window built into the room's door.

Inside, Peter sat against the wall on the far side of the bed, his head tipped back and one knee drawn up close. His eyes were closed but the slight tip of his head told Stiles that he'd been listening to the conversation. Stiles reached down and laid his hand on the doorknob. He wondered, as he turned it, if Peter had been able to hear the beat of his heart increase when he'd said he had a full clip of silver bullets. He wondered if Peter would attack him if he went inside to talk.

The door swung open without a sound.

"Stiles," Peter greeted, without opening his eyes. A grin that sent shivers down Stiles' spine crept onto his lips. "How nice of you to join me." When his eyes opened, they were the golden color most betas wore. "You certainly haven't come to guard me."

"Scott says you told them," Stiles informed him, ignoring the observation. "That you bit him. Is that true?"

Peter hummed low in his throat and closed his eyes, tipping his head back once more. "I didn't give your precious friend away," he murmured. "I told them I'd bitten someone, before the scout."

"Raul," Stiles snapped, surprised at how his throat closed. He hadn't been that close to Raul, but it needled him that Peter had tricked the camp into killing one of their own unnecessarily. "His name was Raul, and they killed him."

"It wasn't my bullet, human," Peter told him, without skipping a beat. "That team attacked me first."

"You smeared my friends over half a mile of forest," Stiles retorted, far more calmly than he felt.

"Only after they were dead," Peter told him, like it was perfectly reasonable. "But you're not here to argue semantics, I assume."

"You killed six people this month, Peter. I was friends with three of them." Stiles shook his head, rolling his eyes as he looked away from the werewolf. "But no, I'm not here to argue _semantics_. I came to find out what you told them, because I need to make a plan. If you didn't tell them who you bit, they're going to search everyone, and that means they're going to find Scott. It's all going to have been for nothing."

Peter rolled his eyes. "You're being a little dramatic, aren't you?" he suggested. "I told your little Neanderthal friends that I would only tell Gerard who I bit. They won't test everyone, your friend will be perfectly safe."

"Perfectly safe?" Stiles echoed, nearly choking on the words. "_Perfectly safe_, Peter? You think you're just going to tell Gerard who it was, and magically Scott's going to be safe? He's going to test everyone anyway because if one person got through his security, there may be others."

Snorting, Peter stretched out a little, scooting toward the edge of the bed. Stiles held his ground in the doorway. "I don't intend to let Gerard leave my presence alive. He won't come after your friend."

"Gerard will kill you," Stiles told him, less sharply than he had hoped. He was feeling a little dizzy at how easily they were throwing around the taking of lives right now. "If he even bothers to come here himself, which he probably won't."

"He'll come," Peter told him, tone darkening. "He killed my family, a long time ago, and he may kill me now, but I will ensure he doesn't survive it. As long as that happens-"

"What the hell, Peter! Don't you even _care_?" Stiles interrupted, incredulous. "You're locked up in the belly of a camp full of hostiles waiting for a slim chance to avenge a family that won't even be able to tell, when you've already got a perfectly good family out in the woods desperately searching for you!" Stiles lowered his voice, reminding himself that they didn't have a lot of time before someone was bound to come down on actual orders from Gerard. "All they want is for you to come home safely. Shouldn't that matter?"

When he fell to silence, he found Peter was just staring at him, brows up and mouth opened slightly without anything to say. Peter's eyes dropped a little and Stiles could see his attention turning inward as he touched the raw wounds Stiles had undoubtedly opened. For a moment Stiles let him, because he needed Peter to be with him on this, because he was already formulating a plan but it would never work without Peter's cooperation.

"If it was me, I could never leave my dad like that," Stiles told him softly. "They need you, man. This revenge shit? It doesn't lead anywhere good. It's not going to bring your family back... but it will make you one more person that Derek and Laura have to lose. They don't deserve that."

For an instant, Peter's gaze met his, but then it slid sideways and Stiles recognized the look. He leaned back, straining to hear any sign of the approaching life that had Peter's attention. Faintly, from a long ways away, he could hear the tapping of boots on linoleum.

"Why are you here, Stiles?" Peter asked, focused on him once more. Stiles didn't like that look.

"I can get you out," Stiles told him. The offer left a bad taste on his tongue. He didn't want to let Peter out; he could still smell the copper tang of blood from the people Peter had killed. But he wasn't about to let Scott get caught and killed, either, and he hadn't been lying when he said Derek and Laura didn't deserve to lose more family. "But I need to know that you'll leave, if I do. I need to know you'll go with Derek, and that you'll all just go."

The footsteps were getting louder now. Stiles could feel his heartbeat singing beneath his skin, making him a little dizzy. Much longer and he would be caught. He backed up a pace, back through the doorway, and laid his hand on the edge of the door. Peter was just staring at him, bewildered, and Stiles could practically see him trying to puzzle out why Stiles would ever make such an offer.

"What's in it for you?" Peter asked him, so softly Stiles almost didn't hear.

"Saving my family," Stiles told him. It was the truth, the plain truth. Scott may not have been blood, but he may as well have been family. There was nothing Stiles wouldn't do for him, right up to _death do us part_. "Like you should be. This is your second chance, Peter. Are you going to waste it on Gerard?"

Then the footsteps were too close, and Stiles had to let the door click shut the moment before the person rounded the corner. He pressed his nose to the glass and glared in at Peter, not sure if he was more angry that they'd been interrupted or that he didn't have an answer.

"Stiles?"

Relaxing a little, he turned to face the semi-familiar voice. "Charles!" he greeted with as little strain on the happiness in his voice as possible. "They send you down to watch it?"

"Yeah," Charles said slowly. "They said Loren would be down here."

Stiles suppressed the urge to curse, and waved a hand. "He was, but I said I could handle it. I wanted a good look at the thing that killed Raul and the others."

At that, Charles nodded, visibly relaxing as well. "Nasty one, isn't it?"

"Surprised it's staying put, honestly," Stiles said, throwing a look over his shoulder in through the glass, knowing Peter could hear every word. "I figured it'd make a run for it, try to make an escape, eh?" he continued, banging a hand on the door as if he were taunting the werewolf.

"I will," filtered Peter's voice from inside. Clearly he was speaking up, to be heard through the thick door.

Stiles smiled at Charles as if he'd proved a point, but he could feel the knot in his gut relaxing. Clapping Charles on the shoulder, he wished him luck and tipped an imaginary hat at him as he walked backward toward the exit. Peter would behave until Stiles returned, and he was sure now that the wolf would come with him. All that was left was to convince everyone else to do too many crazy things on the off chance that they wouldn't all get themselves killed.

* * *

"Why didn't you just let him out then?" Morrell inquired. She hated to interrupt him while he was on a roll, but it was important. "Before the guard, before Charles showed up? You could have just walked out with him, or moved him and told Charles he got out."

"And do what with him?" Stiles asked, tipping his head and furrowing his brow.

"He could have hidden someplace in the camp, couldn't he?" she inquired. "Even another room in the hospital, until it was safe. It seems like that would have been easier for you. Safer."

"Not really," Stiles countered, shaking his head. "Even if a camp-wide search wasn't called, it wouldn't have taken much for them to figure out I was the last one to see him. I didn't have a scratch on me. The way it went, I was vetted when Charlie came by. They'd seen me guard him and leave. It was _reliable_."

"It was a deception," Morrell said. Stiles shrugged, looking away from her.

"It was a precaution," he admitted. "It's not like I had a solid plan or anything. I had a lot of maybes and not a lot of hope and they were going to test everyone in camp if no one came forward, whether Peter was captive or not, if we didn't turn someone over to them." Stiles' shoulders rolled in a shrug. "Besides, he couldn't have made it out cleanly then."

"Cleanly?" She glanced down at the papers on the table between them. She knew they both had read them. She knew she wasn't telling him anything new. "The report says no one died. That sounds pretty clean."

"Yeah," Stiles agreed. "Because we waited. If I'd let him out, he might have made it out of the hospital, or maybe to a different part of it. But the camp was on high alert. If he'd bolted, they'd have caught him before he made the gates, and he'd have had to fight. It would have been a bloodbath." His gaze dropped to his cuffed hands, picking at his thumbnail. "We'd lost enough people to the whole mess. I did my best to make sure no one else got hurt."

"They did get hurt, though," she reminded him softly. "You did, too."

Stiles didn't respond. Even as she watched, his eyes lost focus and she could practically see him reliving the night. She waited, as patiently as possible, watching him fight through the memory, watching until she could see he was coming back to her. There had been one time, just once in their interactions, that she had attempted to move him out of a trance to continue. She still sported the bruise around her wrist from where he had latched on, unseeing.

She never mentioned it to him afterward.

"Stiles?" she asked softly when his head jerked up a little. His focus turned to her, acute and steady. "How did you get Peter out? There were guards, and the report says you were alone."

"I wasn't." Stiles sighed, leaning back in his chair. "I told Lydia I would take her out to Jackson, remember? And Lydia was... Lydia was a force of nature. If you tell her you're going to do something, you'd better damn well do it."

Judging by the exasperated noise Stiles made, Morrell assumed her confusion was evident. She tried to wave it aside with one hand before he could go on. "So she helped you get Peter out."

"No," Stiles said, shaking his head. Morrell's confusion deepened, and Stiles leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table top. "I mean, she wasn't _there_, you know? We left camp and she never really came back. Everything went sideways."

* * *

"I cannot believe we are doing this right now," Stiles muttered. The forest was still around them, unnaturally silent in the way that said there were definitely predators. Stiles just hoped they were hiding because of him and Lydia rather than something nastier. They hadn't been able to grab equipment before leaving, not without getting caught.

"It was your idea," Lydia reminded him from a few paces behind him. He could practically hear the miserable notes in her tone. She was a bookie, not a hunter, not a scout. It was rare for her to be in the wilderness at all, especially this far out, and Stiles couldn't help but wonder if she was regretting her request.

"Actually, _Lydia_," he argued, stressing her name like a bad word. "It was your husband's idea. He wanted to come out and get bit."

"You kept Scott alive,' she countered, climbing over a fallen tree. She accepted his steadying hand from the other side.

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Should I have let him die? Maybe brought him back to be killed?" he asked. He knew the answer, and he knew he was being cranky. It was cold and he wanted to just wake up and have all of this have been a horrible nightmare.

"No," Lydia huffed. "It's just- Hey. Is that the house?"

Up ahead of them the house stood nestled in the barren clearing. Stiles hadn't really been looking at it the first time he'd visited. It was intimidating in the dark, the collapsed portion off to the right, the porch overhang dark and foreboding. It almost looked like the entrance to a cave. There were no lights on inside, though a small light flickered on the front porch, illuminating the figure sitting on the steps, watching them.

Though it was dark, Stiles recognized her. "Laura!" he called out, halting Lydia with an outstretched hand. "We come in peace!"

"I know," Laura called, soft and easy. She clambered to her feet. "Derek's been expecting you."

"Oh, expecting us," Lydia repeated, pitched only for Stiles' benefit despite that Laura probably heard anyway. "He was expecting us, Stiles." It sounded a lot like she blamed him for this.

He just gave her an exhausted glare and moved his hand around to her back, splaying it between her shoulder blades. "Just go," he muttered, pushing her forward gently. "Before they change their minds."

Without further comment, they trudged after Laura into the house. She used the candle she carried to light two more candles and passed them off to Stiles and Lydia. They were lumpy and obviously hand made, probably by the wolves themselves. He tried not to think about them harvesting the wax needed, or about them sitting around forming them into little candles together. It was too... domestic.

Barely halfway through the house, they heard a low groan and Lydia was on the move past Laura without even asking permission. Thankfully Laura didn't stop her, though she did turn a look to Stiles that was caught somewhere between impressed and annoyed. Stiles merely gave her a shrug, because there was literally no way he was going to get between Lydia and Jackson; he'd rather face the werewolves.

"You _idiot_," filtered back to them from where Lydia disappeared, and Laura nodded Stiles forward with rolled eyes. Before he could get around her, however, he felt a gentle tug on the edge of his coat. When he turned, Derek was standing there, looking past him to the room where Lydia was laying into Jackson about how stupid she thought he'd been. He didn't look particularly eager to get between them either.

"Can we talk?" Derek asked, sounding hesitant.

"We caught Peter and they're holding him alive," Stiles blurted before he could think about it. Both Derek and Laura seemed startled, exchanging a wide-eyed glance. "I- I can get him out."

A sigh puffed out of Derek as he ran a hand through his hair and then pressed the heel of his hand to his temple as if warning off a headache. "What?" he finally bit out, like maybe Stiles had just spoken too quickly and Derek hadn't understood.

"Well, _we _didn't catch him," Stiles clarified. "Not my group. The camp though, a hunter team brought him in tonight. Alive. And I think I can get him out."

"Derek..." Laura said softly, but Derek was staring hard at Stiles, who knew his heartbeat must be hammering; he was feeling a little light headed. He hoped Derek wouldn't take it to mean he was lying.

"How long do they- are they planning on holding him?" Derek asked, ignoring whatever Laura had been trying to tell him.

Stiles swallowed, though he was shaking a little. Everything depended on this conversation. "Maybe a day. Gerard won't let him live long, but Peter bought some time. He told the team that caught him that he'd bitten someone in camp, and the full moon's coming. They'll test everyone. They'll find Scott."

"I assume you're here as more than just a news reporter," Derek guessed. "Get to the point."

"Peter wants out," Stiles told him. He didn't miss the flicker of desire that widened Derek's pupils. Peter may not have been the most stable creature, but he was family, and Stiles knew the feeling. "I can get him out, but I may need help. And I... I may have a request."

"A request?" Derek asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow. "Or a demand..."

"A request," Stiles affirmed, motioning with one hand. "You don't have to say yes."

"And if I say no?" Derek inquired, too politely as he crossed his arms. Stiles didn't like the confrontational tone; it made him want to be confrontational back, and he couldn't afford that right now. "Are you going to let them have my uncle?"

That drew Stiles up short. Of course he had meant to use this as a bargaining chip, and he'd assumed that Derek would agree on principal. He assumed Derek would be willing to grant a request, if it meant freeing Peter and escaping. But now that Derek had said it aloud, Stiles found he didn't want to force Derek into a corner over this. He didn't want to force Derek to agree with him.

As true as that was, however, he desperately needed Derek to agree. If he didn't, Stiles and his group - all of his friends - were as good as dead. There was a chance they would just be exiled, those of them that were still human, but Scott and Jackson wouldn't pass that test. Scott and Jackson would take silver bullets to the chest or head, and Stiles would spend the rest of his life blaming himself.

However, if he forced Derek, there was a good chance the wolf would resent it. There was a good chance that whatever bargain they struck would be null as soon as Peter was back with him. He'd already backpedaled on an agreement with Stiles once, when he'd felt no obligation to Stiles. If he outright resented Stiles, there was no telling what he would do.

"No," he said at last, heaving a sigh. It was probably stupid, agreeing to let Peter out without a bargain. Stupid, but right. Scott would have been proud of him; maybe Scott's heroism was rubbing off. "I'll help you anyway."

At that, Derek straightened up, unfolding his arms a little. It was clear he hadn't expected that and wasn't sure what to say in response. "Okay."

Stiles hadn't realized how tense he'd been until he relaxed at being granted audience for his idea. "Take them with you."

Derek's nose scrunched. "Scott and Jackson?"

"No," Stiles said quickly, mirroring Derek's look of confusion. He brushed away the idea with a wave of his hand. "If this all works like I think it will, Scott will be fine. But Jackson won't be. Look, they have to catch someone, right? It's going to be Scott or Jackson, and if Jackson's plan works, he's going to get caught anyway. Everyone knows about Lydia's... condition."

"So you want me to take a newly turned werewolf and his human mate with us when we try to make an escape with a camp of angry hunters on our tails?" Derek clarified.

"Okay," Stiles conceded, squinting a little as he hunched his shoulders. "It sounds way less sane when you say it like that."

"That's because it's insane," Derek told him, leaning forward just a little to drive home the point.

"It's not!" Stiles protested, reaching for Derek's arm when he began to turn to leave. Derek shot him a glare and Stiles snapped his hand back like he'd been burned, wondering when he'd gotten comfortable enough to think that had been a good idea. These were still supers, still deadly creatures. "I mean, it's a little crazy, but it's totally possible, right?"

Sighing, Derek looked away from Stiles. "They won't agree to it, even if I do," Derek told him. "They won't want to give up camp life."

"Do you want to maybe ask before you decide that for them?" Stiles inquired, regretting the sarcasm when he saw Derek's jaw clench.

When Derek didn't answer, Stiles shimmied around him and headed for the door to the bedroom where Jackson was being kept. It was Isaac's room, the same place Scott had been kept, but Isaac was nowhere in sight this time. Jackson was sitting on the edge of the bed, Lydia beside him, pressed shoulder to shoulder with him. They both looked up when Stiles entered. It was weird to see Jackson attempt a smile that wasn't predatory or smug; Stiles hoped he never had to see Jackson trying on gratitude again, it was really awkward.

"We're never going to get past the gate when we go back," Lydia said, instead of greeting him.

"I know," Stiles agreed. Jackson wouldn't meet his eyes. "But I have an idea, if you want to hear it."

"You want us to run away with the wolves," Jackson mumbled. Stiles shot him a confused look; Scott's hearing hadn't gotten that good that fast. When Jackson caught his expression, he rolled his eyes. "You weren't exactly quiet."

Stiles tried not to look too guilty as he turned his attention to Lydia. "Everyone knows you can't conceive, Lydia. If this works, and you get pregnant... they'll start asking why. They'll figure it out. And Jackson won't be safe, and you won't be safe, and your kid won't be safe."

"We don't even know if it will work," Lydia pointed out softly.

"Even if it doesn't... Gerard is going to be testing everyone. You know that." He hated having to press the issue with her, but they were running out of time. Even if they left right now, they'd barely make camp by dawn. "Maybe he'll catch Scott first. Maybe not. Maybe he won't stop once he finds one person that didn't come forward. Or _we_ can call the shots."

She swallowed, squeezing Jackson's hand. He glanced sideways at her and smiled, though it was the sort of heartsick, terrified smile of someone contemplating their own demise. "We don't really have a choice, do we?"

"Not really," she agreed, leaning over to press her forehead against his. She closed her eyes. "Will they even take us?"

Stiles turned to look at Derek, who had joined him in the doorway. Derek was watching the couple with brows drawn in and when he realized he was the one being asked, he gave a half-hearted shrug of surrender. "If you're really willing to give up your old life and follow us, we'll take you."

"If nothing else, they can get you to a town where no one knows you," Stiles suggested. "There's got to be other settlements out there, right?"

"There are," Derek agreed. "Some take in newcomers permanently. Some have rules about how long travelers can stay. We can take you to one that's safe."

"See?" Stiles told them, though even he could hear how strained his voice was. He probably wasn't fooling either of them. "Derek and his pack will take care of you, Scott will be safe. Everyone lives-"

"I swear to god if you say happily ever after, I will tell them _you_ are the werewolf," Jackson snipped, though it was without real venom. Lydia whacked him on the shoulder.

"Don't be like that," she reprimanded. "Stiles is right. This is the safest way for everyone." Then she looked to Stiles, eyes bright in a way that suggested she might have been about to cry. "I assume you mean to have Jackson admit he's the one Peter bit?"

"What?" Jackson said at the same time as Stiles said: "Yeah."

"Why?" Jackson asked, glaring at Stiles now.

"Because, dude," Stiles reasoned. "Because if you're the one that Peter bit, they don't have to test everyone. If they know who it is, if you come forward, then Scott doesn't get tested, and he gets to stay here with Allison."

Though Jackson groaned, he agreed. "Whatever, I guess it doesn't matter. If you get me killed, Stilinski, I'm coming back for you."

"You're not going to get killed," Stiles told him, rolling his eyes. "Come on. We've got to make it back before they start breakfast. You know they'll put wolfsbane in the morning drinks if they still don't know."

Lydia and Jackson clambered to their feet as Stiles backed out of the doorway around Derek. He could feel the wolf watching him, felt like he was being studied, but he ignored it. They had a lot to get done and not a lot of time in which to do it. He began to move for the exit, Derek trailing behind him and Lydia and Jackson behind Derek. Laura met them at the door, drawing it open, and Stiles let Lydia and Jackson pass him in favor of hanging back to say goodbye.

"Thank you," he said to Derek, hoping he could convey all the gratitude he felt in just those words. "If it counts for anything, I'm sorry everything got so messed up for you." He hesitated, mouth going dry. "I'm probably not going to get a chance to say goodbye again."

"Probably not," Derek agreed.

"So, you know..." Stiles resisted the urge to rub his palms on his pants to dry them. "A lot of crappy stuff's happened because of your pack."

"Goodbye, Stiles," Derek told him firmly, clearly holding back from rolling his eyes.

"That's not what I meant," Stiles told him quickly, scrubbing a hand through his hair and hoping he didn't look as miserable as he felt just then. "I don't regret it," he said in a rush, before he lost the nerve. "I don't regret meeting you. Any of you."

That seemed to give Derek pause. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I'm glad we didn't kill each other, too."

"Okay." Stiles nodded, as if the issue had been settled, and turned to go.

"Stiles?" He reached out, laying a hand on Stiles' shoulder.

He turned back, met Derek's eyes. "Yeah?"

"If you let him out, you're going to get in trouble." Stiles wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a question or not, so he just waited. "They might hurt you."

"Yeah," Stiles agreed. "But only if I get caught."

"They could kill you, Stiles. They've killed people for less." If Stiles didn't know better, he would have said Derek was _concerned_ for him.

He smiled. "So, I won't get caught," he concluded, shrugging off Derek's hand. He didn't know what to do with the strange, intense look Derek gave him at that, the air too charged between them for him to crack a joke about it. "Just... be at the East entrance of the camp at dawn, okay? And be ready to run."

There wasn't anything else to say. He could feel Derek's eyes on him as he stepped off the porch and crossed the clearing to catch up to Lydia and Jackson. He spent the entire walk back convincing himself he didn't regret just walking away.

* * *

"Allison?" Jane called, turning back from halfway around the house. She was nearly to the portion that was taller than her, now. "You said they drugged them. Did they use darts?"

"Bullets," Allison replied, raising her voice over the gaping stillness of the forest. "Back then we didn't have the resources for darts."

"Powdered wolfsbane tips?" Jane patted at the edge of the house with the flat of her palm, no longer looking at Allison. Her palm came away filthy with soot.

"Yes," Allison confirmed. "My father's design. It will kill a wolf even if it doesn't hit the head or heart."

Though she was too far away to hear, Allison knew the small 'hm' noise Jane made. She'd made it every time Allison said something that got filed away into the vault of the woman's mind rather than discussed. It was irritating, to say the least, but Allison let it go. Jane disappeared around the corner of the house and when Allison heard her shifting things around, she finally found the courage to get a little closer. The house was completely unstable and shifting anything could cause further collapse.

"What are you doing?" Allison asked when she reached the corner. She peered around it, keeping as much distance between herself and the house as was possible while still finding her charge.

Glancing up, Jane smiled. "Just looking."

"That doesn't look like just looking," Allison told her straight-faced. "In fact it looks an awful lot like you're trying to find a way into the basement."

"Hm," Jane murmured, that same annoying noise accompanied by a pleasant smile that said she didn't disagree. "I suppose it does."

Allison rolled her eyes. "It's not safe. The whole structure is compromised."

For a moment, Jane just crouched where she was, staring into the abyss of the basement through the small opening she had found between some of the branches of the fallen tree. If they'd had a flashlight, Allison knew that they might be able to see a little deeper, see the wreckage of the house collapsed a couple yards beyond the hole. She knew what else they would see, and she had no desire to see it.

Then Jane was getting to her feet, squinting a little in thought, and she took a step away from the house. "Where are they buried?"

By the sympathetic look Jane gave her, Allison knew she hadn't been fast enough to hide her pained expression. "They weren't," she mumbled, heart twisting up in her chest. "Kate just burned the house down around them and left them to rot."

A small amount of satisfaction curled in Allison's chest at the sick look on Jane's face. Kate didn't deserve anything less.

"Why?" Jane breathed, though it slipped out of her in a way that said she hadn't meant to say it aloud.

There wasn't really an answer, so Allison just shrugged. "Because they were monsters, to her. They were animals- worse than animals I guess, because they preyed on humans. Or she thought they did, anyway." Allison's voice had gone hoarse over the lump in her throat. It had been so long since she'd talked about any of this. It still felt raw. She still felt damaged. "The pack never got a burial because the camp only buries fallen humans."

For once, Jane didn't make a sound. She just observed Allison for a moment, and then she was reaching out, laying a warm palm on her cold shoulder. Despite that Allison expected to hear some form of apology, Jane didn't give one. It was comforting; there was only one person Allison wanted an apology from, and that was no longer possible.

Wiping at her eyes, stinging with tears now, Allison forced a smile. "We should get back," she said, instead of acknowledging the moment. "They'll notice if we're gone much longer."

Jane nodded and motioned for Allison to lead the way. Wrapping her coat a little tighter around herself, Allison began to move for the edge of the clearing, toward home. Leaves crackled and crunched beneath her feet and after a moment she realized it was _only_ her feet, and she turned back.

Behind her, Jane stood at the edge of the house, staring up at it with a thoughtful look on her face. Allison wondered what Jane saw, without the layers upon layers of history Allison couldn't forget. She wondered what the burned out shell could tell someone whose world hadn't come close to ending with the blaze. She wondered what the house looked like to someone who couldn't see the ghosts.

Then Jane turned, catching her eye, and the moment evaporated as she began to head Allison's way. When she reached Allison's side, she smiled, and they headed down the path home together.


End file.
